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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 



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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



FABLE FOR CRITICS, BY 
ii JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 
WITH VIGNETTE PORTRAITS 
OF THE AUTHORS DE QUIBUS 

FABULA NARRATUR 





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BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

(£fa liitoersi&e press, damfcrtboe 

MDCCCXCI 









Copyright, 1848, 
By GEORGE P. PUTNAM. 

Copyright, 1876, 
By JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

Copyright, 1890, 
By HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 

All rights reserved. 



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The Riverside Press, Cambridge Mass., U. S. A. 
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company. 



Reader ! walk up at ,once (it will soon be too late) and buy 
at a perfectly ruinous rate 



FABLE FOR CRITICS; 



Better— 

I like, as a thing that the reader's first fancy may strike, 

an old fashioned title-page, 

such as presents a tabular view of the volume's contents— 

A GLANCE 
AT A FEW OF OUR LITERARY PROGENIES 

(Mrs. Malapropos word) 



FROM 



THE TUB OF DIOGENES; 

A VOCAL AND MUSICAL MEDLEY 

THAT 18, 

A SERIES OF JOKES 

Eg a WlotMtvtul <&ttf?, 

who accompanies himself with a rub^i-dub-dub y full of spirit and grace, 
on the top of the tub. 



SET FORTH IN 
October, the 21s* day, in the year '48. 
G. P. PUTNAM, BROADWAY. 



To 

CHARLES F. BRIGGS 

THIS VOLUME IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED 



PREFATORY NOTE 

This jeu d' esprit was extemporized, I may fairly say, 
so rapidly was it written, purely for my own amusement 
and with no thought of publication. I sent daily instal- 
ments of it to a friend in New York, the late Charles F. 
Briggs. He urged me to let it be printed, and I at last 
consented to its anonymous publication. The secret was 
kept till after several persons had laid claim to its au- 
thorship. 



LIST OF PORTRAITS 



Cornelius Mathews 
Evert Augustus Duyckinck 
rufus wllmot griswold 
Ralph Waldo Emerson 
Thomas Carlyle 
Amos Bronson Alcott 
Orestes Augustus Brownson 
Nathaniel Parker Willis 
Theodore Parker . 
William Cullen Bryant . 
John Greenleaf Whittier . 
Richard Henry Dana. 
John Neal .... 
Nathaniel Hawthorne 
John Sullivan Dwight . 
-James Fenimore Cooper 
Margaret Fuller . 
Charles Frederick Briggs 
Edgar Allan Poe . 
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 
Lydia Maria Child . 

Washington Irving 
Sylvester Judd 
Oliver Wendell Holmes . 
James Russell Lowell . 
Fitz-Greene Halleck . 



PAGE 

37 

42 

43' 

45 

47 

48' 

49 
52 
55 
58 
61 
62 
64 

65 
66 

72' 

77 

78 

78' 

80 



90 
gi 
92 



It being the commonest mode of procedure, I premise 
a few candid remarks 

To the Reader : — 

This trifle, begun to please only myself and my own 
private fancy, was laid on the shelf. But some friends, 
who had seen it, induced me, by dint of saying they 
liked it, to put it in print. That is, having come to that 
very conclusion, I asked their advice when 'twould make 
no confusion. For though (in the gentlest of ways) they 
had hinted it was scarce worth the while, I should doubt- 
less have printed it. 

I began it, intending a Fable, a frail, slender thing, 
rhyme-ywinged, with a sting in its tail. But, by addings 
and alterings not previously planned, digressions chance- 
hatched, like birds' eggs in' the sand, and dawdlings 
to suit every whimsey's demand (always freeing the 
bird which I held in my hand, for the two perched, per- 
haps out of reach, in the tree), — it grew by degrees to 
the size which you see. I was like the old woman that 
carried the calf, and my neighbors, like hers, no doubt, 
wonder and laugh ; and when, my strained arms with 
their grown burthen full, I call it my Fable, they call it a 
bull. 

Having scrawled at full gallop (as far as that goes) in 
a style that is neither good verse nor bad prose, and 



IO A FABLE FOR CRITICS 

being a person whom nobody knows, some people will 
say I am rather more free with my readers than it is be- 
coming to be, that I seem to expect them to wait on my 
leisure in following wherever I wander at pleasure, that, 
in short, I take more than a young author's lawful ease, 
and laugh in a queer way so like Mephistopheles, that 
the Public will doubt, as they grope through my rhythm, 
if in truth I am making fun of them or with them. 

So the excellent Public is hereby assured that the sale 
of my book is already secured. For there is not a poet 
throughout the whole land but will purchase a copy or 
two out of hand, in the fond expectation of being 
amused in it, by seeing his betters cut up and abused in 
it. Now, I find, by a pretty exact calculation, there are 
something like ten thousand bards in the nation, of that 
special variety whom the Review and Magazine critics 
call lofty and true, and about thirty thousand {this tribe 
is increasing) of the kinds who are termed/z/// of promise 
and pleasing. The Public will see by a glance at this 
schedule, that they cannot expect me to be over-sedulous 
about courting them, since it seems I have got enough 
fuel made sure of for boiling my pot. 

As for such of our poets as find not their names men- 
tioned once in my pages, with praises or blames, let 
them send in their cards, without further delay, to my 
friend G. P. Putnam, Esquire, in Broadway, where a 
list will be kept with the strictest regard to the day and 
the hour of receiving the card. Then, taking them up 
as I chance to have time (that is, if their names can be 



A FABLE FOR CRITICS II 

twisted in rhyme), I will honestly give each his proper 
position, at the rate of one author to each new edi- 
tion. Thus a PREMIUM is offered sufficiently high 
(as the magazines say when they tell their best lie) to in- 
duce bards to club their resources and buy the balance 
of every edition, until they have all of them fairly been 
run through the mill. 

One word to such readers (judicious and wise) as read 
books with something behind the mere eyes, of whom in 
the country, perhaps, there are two, including myself, 
gentle reader, and you. All the characters sketched in 
this slight Jeu d' esprit, though, it may be, they seem, here 
and there, rather free, and drawn from a somewhat too 
cynical standpoint, are meant to be faithful, for that is 
the grand point, and none but an owl would feel sore at 
a rub from a jester who tells you, without any subter- 
fuge, that he sits in Diogenes' tub. 



A PRELIMINARY NOTE TO THE SECOND 
EDITION, 

though it well may be reckoned, of all composition, the 
species at once most delightful and healthy, is a thing 
which an author, unless he be wealthy and willing to pay 
for that kind of delight, is not, in all instances, called on 
to write, though there are, it is said, who, their spirits 
to cheer, slip in a new title-page three times a year, and 
in this way snuff up an imaginary savor of that sweetest 
of dishes, the popular favor, — much as if a starved 
painter should fall to and treat the Ugolino inside to a 
picture of meat. 

You remember (if not, pray turn backward and look) 
that, in writing the preface which ushered my book, I 
treated you, excellent Public, not merely with a cool dis- 
regard, but downright cavalierly. Now I would not take 
back the least thing I then said, though I thereby could 
butter both sides of my bread, for I never could see that 
an author owed aught to the people he solaced, diverted, 
or taught ; and, as for mere fame, I have long ago 
learned that the persons by whom it is finally earned are 
those with whom your verdict weighed not a pin, unsus- 
tained by the higher court sitting within. 

But I wander from what I intended to say, — that you 



A FABLE FOR CRITICS 1 3 

have, namely, shown such a liberal way of thinking, 
and so much aesthetic perception of anonymous worth 
in the handsome reception you gave to my book, spite 
of some private piques (having bought the first thou- 
sand in barely two weeks), that I think, past a doubt, 
if you measured the phiz of yours most devotedly, Won- 
derful Quiz, you would find that its vertical section was 
shorter, by an inch and two tenths, or 'twixt that and a 
quarter. 

You have watched a child playing — in those won- 
drous years when belief is not bound to the eyes and the 
ears, and the vision divine is so clear and unmarred, 
that each baker of pies in the dirt is a bard ? Give 
a knife and a shingle, he fits out a fleet, and, on that 
little mud-puddle over the street, his fancy, in purest 
good faith, will make sail round the globe with a puff 
of his breath for a gale, will visit, in barely ten min- 
utes, all climes, and do the Columbus-feat hundreds of 
times. Or, suppose the young poet fresh stored with 
delights from that Bible of childhood, the Arabian 
Nights, he will turn to a crony and cry, " Jack, let's play 
that I am a Genius ! " Jacky straightway makes Alad- 
din's lamp out of a stone, and, for hours, they enjoy each 
his own supernatural powers. This is all very pretty 
and pleasant, but then suppose our two urchins have 
grown into men, and both have turned authors, — one 
says to his brother, " Let 's play we 're the American 
somethings or other, — say Homer or Sophocles, Goethe 
or Scott (only let them be big enough, no matter what). 



14 A FABLE FOR CRITICS 

Come, you shall be Byron or Pope, which you choose : 
I '11 be Coleridge, and both shall write mutual reviews." 
So they both (as mere strangers) before many days send 
each other a cord of anonymous bays. Each, piling his 
epithets, smiles in his sleeve to see what his friend can 
be made to believe ; each, reading the other's unbiased 
review, thinks — Here 's pretty high praise, but no more 
than my due. Well, we laugh at them both, and yet 
make no great fuss when the same farce is acted to ben- 
efit us. Even I, who, if asked, scarce a month since, 
what Fudge meant, should have answered, the dear Pub- 
lic's critical judgment, begin to think sharp-witted Hor- 
ace spoke sooth when he said, that the Public sometimes 
hit the truth. 

In reading these lines, you perhaps have a vision of a 
person in pretty good health and condition ; and yet, 
since I put forth my primary edition, I have been 
crushed, scorched, withered, used up and put down (by 
Smith with the cordial assistance of Brown), in all, if you 
put any faith in my rhymes, to the number of ninety-five 
several times, and, while I am writing, — I tremble to 
think of it, for I may at this moment be just on the 
brink of it, — Molybdostom, angry at being omitted, has 
begun a critique, — am I not to be pitied ? 1 

Now I shall not crush them since, indeed, for that 
matter, no pressure I know of could render them flatter • 

1 The wise Scandinavians probably called their bards by the queer- 
looking title of Scald, in a delicate way, as it were, just to hint to the world 
the hot water they always get into. 



A FABLE FOR CRITICS 1 5 

nor wither, nor scorch them, — no action of fire could 
make either them or their articles drier ; nor waste time 
in putting them down — I am thinking not their own 
self-inflation will keep them from sinking ; for there 's 
this contradiction about the whole bevy, — though with- 
out the least weight, they are awfully heavy. No, my 
dear honest bore, surdo fabidam narras, they are no 
more to me than a rat in the arras. I can walk with the 
Doctor, get facts from the Don, or draw out the Lambish 
quintessence of John, and feel nothing more than a half- 
comic sorrow, to think that they all will be lying to-mor- 
row tossed carelessly up on the waste-paper shelves, and 
forgotten by all but their half-dozen selves. Once snug 
in my attic, my fire in a roar, I leave the whole pack of 
them outside the door. With Hakluyt or Purchas I 
wander away to the black northern seas or barbaric Ca- 
thay ; get fou with O'Shanter, and sober me then with 
that builder of brick-kilnish dramas, rare Ben ; snuff 
Herbert, as holy as a flower on a grave ; with Fletcher 
wax tender, o'er Chapman grow brave ; with Marlowe or 
Kyd take a fine poet-rave ; in Very, most Hebrew of 
Saxons, find peace ; with Lycidas welter on vext Irish 
seas ; with "Webster grow wild, and climb earthward 
again, down by mystical Browne's Jacob 's-ladder-like 
brain, to that spiritual Pepys (Cotton's version) Mon- 
taigne ; find a new depth in Wordsworth, undreamed of 
before, — that marvel, a poet divine who can bore. Or, 
out of my study, the scholar thrown off, Nature holds up 
her shield 'gainst the sneer and the scoff; the landscape, 



1 6 A FABLE FOR CRITICS 

forever consoling and kind, pours her wine and her oil 
on the smarts of the mind. The waterfall, scattering its 
vanishing gems ; the tall grove of hemlocks, with moss 
on their stems, like plashes of sunlight ; the pond in the 
woods, where no foot but mine and the bittern's intrudes, 
where pitcher-plants purple and gentians hard by recall 
to September the blue of June's sky ; these are all my 
kind neighbors, and leave me no wish to say aught to 
you all, my poor critics, but — pish ! I have buried the 
hatchet ; I am twisting an allumette out of one of you 
now, and relighting my calumet. In your private capaci- 
ties, come when you please, I will give you my hand and 
a fresh pipe apiece. 

As I ran through the leaves of my poor little book, to 
take a fond author's first tremulous look, it was quite an 
excitement to hunt the errata, sprawled in as birds' 
tracks are in some kinds of strata (only these made 
things crookeder). Fancy an heir that a father had 
seen born well-featured and fair, turning suddenly wry- 
nosed, club-footed, squint-eyed, hair -lipped, wapper- 
jawed, carrot-haired, from a pride become an aversion, 
— my case was yet worse. A club-foot (by way of a 
change) in a verse, I might have forgiven, an <?'s being 
wry, a limp in an e, or a cock in an /, — but to have the 
sweet babe of my brain served in pi! I am not queasy- 
stomached, but such a Thyestean banquet as that w r as 
quite out of the question. 

In the edition now issued, no pains are neglected, and 
my verses, as orators say, stand corrected. Yet some 



A FABLE FOR CRITICS lj 

blunders remain of the Public's own make, which I wish 
to correct for my personal sake. For instance, a char- 
acter drawn in pure fun and condensing the traits of a 
dozen in one, has been, as I hear, by some persons 
applied to a good friend of mine, whom to stab in the 
side, as we walked along chatting and joking together, 
would not be my way. I can hardly tell whether a ques- 
tion will ever arise in which he and I should by any 
strange fortune agree, but meanwhile my esteem for him 
grows as I know him, and, though not the best judge on 
earth of a poem, he knows what it is he is saying and 
why, and is honest and fearless, two good points which I 
have not found so rife I can easily smother my love for 
them, whether on my side or t'other. 

For my other anonymi, you may be sure that I know 
what is meant by a caricature, and what by a portrait. 
There are those who think it is capital fun to be spatter- 
ing their ink on quiet, unquarrelsome folk, but the min- 
ute the game changes sides and the others begin it, they 
see something savage and horrible in it. As for me I 
respect neither women nor men for their gender, nor own 
any sex in a pen. I choose just to hint to some cause- 
less unfriends that, as far as I know, there are always 
two ends (and one of them heaviest, too) to a staff, and 
two parties also to every good laugh. 



a tfable for Critics 

Phcebus, sitting one day in a laurel-tree's shade, 
Was reminded of Daphne, of whom it was made, 
For the god being one day too warm in his wooing, 
She took to the tree to escape his pursuing; 
Be the cause what it might, from his offers she shrunk, 
And, Ginevra-like, shut herself up in a trunk ; 
And, though 't was a step into which he had driven her, 
He somehow or other had never forgiven her ; 
Her memory he nursed as a kind of a tonic, 
Something bitter to chew when he 'd play the Byronic, 
And I can't count the obstinate nymphs that he brought 

over 
By a strange kind of smile he put on when he thought 

of her. 
" My case is like Dido's," he sometimes remarked ; 
" When I last saw my love she was fairly embarked 
In a laurel, as she thought — but (ah, how fate mocks !) 
She has found it by this time a very bad box ; 
Let hunters from me take this saw when they need it, — 
You 're not always sure of your game when you Ve 

treed it. 



20 A FABLE FOR CRITICS 

Just conceive such a change taking place in one's mis- 
tress ! 

What romance would be left ? — who can flatter or kiss 
trees ? 

And, for mercy's sake, how could one keep up a dia- 
logue 

With a dull wooden thing that will live and will die a 

log,— 
Not to say that the thought would forever intrude 
That you 've less chance to win her the more she is 

wood? 
Ah ! it went to my heart, and the memory still grieves, 
To see those loved graces all taking their leaves ; 
Those charms beyond speech, so enchanting, but now, 
As they left me forever, each making its bough ! 
If her tongue had a tang sometimes more than was right, 
Her new bark is worse than ten times her old bite." 

Now, Daphne — before she was happily treeified — 
Over all other blossoms the lily had deified, 
And when she expected the god on a visit 
('Twas before he had made his intentions explicit), 
Some buds she arranged with a vast deal of care, 
To look as if artlessly twined in her hair, 
Where they seemed, as he said, when he paid his 
addresses, 



A FABLE FOR CRITICS 21 

Like the day breaking through the long night of her 

tresses ; 
So whenever he wished to be quite irresistible, 
Like a man with eight trumps in his hand at a whist- 
table 
(I feared me at first that the rhyme was untwistable, 
Though I might have lugged in an allusion to Christa- 

bel),- 
He would take up a lily, and gloomily look in it, 
As I shall at the , when they cut up my book in it. 

Well, here, after all the bad rhyme I Ye been spinning, 
I 've got back at last to my story's beginning : 
Sitting there, as I say, in the shade of his mistress, 
As dull as a volume of old Chester mysteries, 
Or as those puzzling specimens which, in old histories, 
We read of his verses — the Oracles, namely, — 
(I wonder the Greeks should have swallowed them 

tamely, 
For one might bet safely whatever he has to risk, 
They were laid at his door by some ancient Miss Aste- 
risk, 
And so dull that the men who retailed them out-doors 
Got the ill name of augurs, because they were bores, — ) 
First, he mused what the animal substance or herb is 
Would induce a mustache, for you know he 's imberbis ; 



22 A FABLE FOR CRITICS 

Then he shuddered to think how his youthful position 
Was assailed by the age of his son the physician ; 
At some poems he glanced, had been sent to him lately, 
And the metre and sentiment puzzled him greatly; 
" Mehercle ! I 'd make such proceeding felonious, — 
Have they all of them slept in the cave of Trophonius ? 
Look well to your seat, 't is like taking an airing 
On a corduroy road, and that out of repairing ; 
It leads one, 't is true, through the primitive forest, 
Grand natural features, but then one has no rest ; 
You just catch a glimpse of some ravishing distance, 
When a jolt puts the whole of it out of existence, — 
Why not use their ears, if they happen to have any ? " 
— Here the laurel-leaves murmured the name of poor 
Daphne. 

" O, weep with me, Daphne," he sighed, " for you know 

it's 
A terrible thing to be pestered with poets ! 
But, alas, she is dumb, and the proverb holds good, 
She never will cry till she 's out of the wood ! 
What would n't I give if I never had known of her ? 
'T were a kind of relief had I something to groan over : 
If I had but some letters of hers, now, to toss over, 
I might turn for the nonce a Byronic philosopher, 
And bewitch all the flats by bemoaning the loss of her. 



A FABLE FOR CRITICS 2$ 

One needs something tangible, though, to begin on, — 

A loom, as it were, for the fancy to spin on ; 

What boots all your grist ? it can never be ground 

Till a breeze makes the arms of the windmill go round, 

(Or, if 't is a water-mill, alter the metaphor, 

And say it won't stir, save the wheel be well wet afore, 

Or lug in some stuff about water "so dreamily," — 

It is not a metaphor, though, 't is a simile) ; 

A lily, perhaps, would set my mill a-going, 

For just at this season, I think, they are blowing. 

Here, somebody, fetch one ; not very far hence 

They 're in bloom by the score, 't is but climbing a 

fence , 
There 's a poet hard by, who does nothing but fill his 
Whole garden, from one end to t' other, with lilies ; 
A very good plan, were it not for satiety, 
One longs for a weed here and there, for variety; 
Though a weed is no more than a flower in disguise, 
Which is seen through at once, if love give a man 

eyes." 

Now there happened to be among Phoebus's follow- 
ers, 
A gentleman, one of the omnivorous swallowers, 
Who bolt every book that comes out of the press, 
Without the least question of larger or less, 



24 A FABLE FOR CRITICS 

Whose stomachs are strong at the expense of their 

head, — 
For reading new books is like eating new bread, 
One can bear it at. first, but by gradual steps he 
Is brought to death's door of a mental dyspepsy. 
On a previous stage of existence, our Hero 
Had ridden outside, with the glass below zero ; 
He had been, 't is a fact you may safely rely on, 
Of a very old stock a most eminent scion, — 
A stock all fresh quacks their fierce boluses ply on, 
Who stretch the new boots Earth 's unwilling to try on, 
Whom humbugs of all shapes and sorts keep their eye on, 
Whose hair 's in the mortar of every new Zion, 
Who, when whistles are dear, go directly and buy one, 
Who think slavery a crime that we must not say fie on, 
Who hunt, if they e'er hunt at all, with the lion 
(Though they hunt lions also, whenever they spy one), 
Who contrive to make every good fortune a wry one, 
And at last choose the hard bed of honor to die on, 
Whose pedigree, traced to earth's earliest years, 
Is longer than anything else but their ears ; — 
In short, he was sent into life with the wrong key, 
He unlocked the door, and stept forth a poor donkey. 
Though kicked and abused by his bipedal betters 
Yet he filled no mean place in the kingdom of letters ; 
Far happier than many a literary hack, 



A FABLE FOR CRITICS 2$ 

He bore only paper-mill rags on his back 
(For it makes a vast difference which side the mill 
One expends on the paper his labor and skill) ; 
So, when his soul waited a new transmigration, 
And Destiny balanced 'tvvixt this and that station, 
Not having much time to expend upon bothers, 
Remembering he 'd had some connection with authors, 
And considering his four legs had grown paralytic, — 
She set him on two, and he came forth a critic. 

Through his babyhood no kind of pleasure he took 
In any amusement but tearing a book ; 
For him there was no intermediate stage 
From babyhood up to straight-laced middle age ; 
There were years when he did n't wear coat-tails behind, 
But a boy he could never be rightly defined ; 
Like the Irish Good* Folk, though in length scarce a 

span, 
From the womb he came gravely, a little old man ; 
While other boys' trousers demanded the toil 
Of the motherly fingers on all kinds of soil, 
Red, yellow, brown, black, clayey, gravelly, loamy, 
He sat in the corner and read Viri Romae. 
He never was known to unbend or to revel once 
In base, marbles, hockey, or kick up the devil once ; 
He was just one of those who excite the benevolence 



26 A FABLE FOR CRITICS 

Of your old prigs who sound the soul's depths with a 

ledger, 
And are on the lookout for some young men to " edger- 
cate," as they call it, who won't be too costly, 
And who '11 afterward take to the ministry mostly ; 
Who always wear spectacles, always look bilious, 
Always keep on good terms with each mater-familias 
Throughout the whole parish, and manage to rear 
Ten boys like themselves, on four hundred a year : 
Who, fulfilling in turn the same fearful conditions, 
Either preach through their noses, or go upon missions. 

In this way our Hero got safely to college, 
Where he bolted alike both his commons and knowledge ; 
A reading-machine, always wound up and going, 
He mastered whatever was not worth the knowing, 
Appeared in a gown, with black waistcoat of satin, 
To spout such a Gothic oration in Latin 
That Tully could never have made out a word in it 
(Though himself was the model the author preferred in 

it), 
And grasping the parchment which gave him in fee 
All the mystic and-so-forths contained in A. B., 
He was launched (life is always compared to a sea), 
With just enough learning, and skill for the using it, 
To prove he 'd a brain, by forever confusing it. 



A FABLE FOR CRITICS 2J 

So worthy St. Benedict, piously burning 
With the holiest zeal against secular learning, 
Nesciensque scienter, as writers express it, 
Indoctusque sapienter a Roma recessit. 

'T would be endless to tell you the things that he 

knew, 
Each a separate fact, undeniably true, 
But with him or each other they 'd nothing to do ; 
No power of combining, arranging, discerning, 
Digested the masses he learned into learning ; 
There was one thing in life he had practical knowledge 

for 
(And this, you will think, he need scarce go to college 

for), - 
Not a deed would he do, nor a word would he utter. 
Till he 'd weighed its relations to plain bread and butter. 
When he left Alma Mater, he practised his wits 
In compiling the journals' historical bits, — 
Of shops broken open, men falling in fits, 
Great fortunes in England bequeathed to poor printers, 
And cold spells, the coldest for many past winters, — 
Then, rising by industry, knack, and address, 
Got notices up for an unbiased press, 
With a mind so well poised, it seemed equally made for 
Applause or abuse, just which chanced to be paid for ; 



28 A FABLE FOR CRITICS 

From this point his progress was rapid and sure, 
To the post of a regular heavy reviewer. 

And here I must say he wrote excellent articles 
On Hebraical points, or the force of Greek particles ; 
They filled up the space nothing else was prepared for, 
And nobody read that which nobody cared for ; 
If any old book reached a fiftieth edition, 
He could fill forty pages with safe erudition : 
He could gauge the old books by the old set of rules, 
And his very old nothings pleased very old fools ; 
But give him a new book, fresh out of the heart, 
Arid you put him at sea without compass or chart, — 
His blunders aspired to the rank of an art ; 
For his lore was engraft, something foreign that grew in 

him, 
Exhausting the sap of the native and true in him, 
So that when a man came with a soul that was new in 

him, 
Carving new forms of truth out of Nature's old granite, 
New and old at their birth, like Le Verrier's planet, 
Which, to get a true judgment, themselves must create 
In the soul of their critic the measure and weight, 
Being rather themselves a fresh standard of grace, 
To compute their own judge, and assign him his place, 
Our reviewer would crawl all about it and round it, 



A FABLE FOR CRITICS 



2 9 



And, reporting each circumstance just as he found it, 
Without the least malice, —his record would be 
Profoundly aesthetic as that of a flea, 
Which, supping on Wordsworth, should print, for our 

sakes, 
Recollections of nights with the Bard of the Lakes, 
Or, lodged by an Arab guide, ventured to render a 
Comprehensive account of the ruins of Denderah. 

As I said, he was never precisely unkind, 
The defect in his brain was just absence of mind ; 
If he boasted, 'twas simply that he was self-made, 
A position which I, for one, never gainsaid, 
My respect for my Maker supposing a skill 
In His works which our Hero would answer but ill ; 
And I trust that the mould which he used may be 

cracked, or he, 
Made bold by success, may enlarge his phylactery, 
And set up a kind of a man-manufactory, — 
An event which I shudder to think about, seeing 
That Man is a moral, accountable being. 

He meant well enough, but was still in the way, 
As dunces still are, let them be where they may ; 
Indeed, they appear to come into existence 
To impede other folks with their awkward assistance ; 



30 A FABLE FOR CRITICS 

If you set up a dunce on the very North pole 

All alone with himself, I believe, on my soul, 

He 'd manage to get betwixt somebody's shins, 

And pitch him down bodily, all in his sins, 

To the grave polar bears sitting round on the ice, 

All shortening their grace, to be in for a slice ; 

Or, if he found nobody else there to pother, 

Why, one of his legs would just trip up the other, 

For there 's nothing we read of in torture's inventions, 

Like a well-meaning dunce, with the best of intentions. 

A terrible fellow to meet in society, 
Not the toast that he buttered was ever so dry at tea ; 
There he 'd sit at the table and stir in his sugar, 
Crouching close for a spring, all the while, like a cougar ; 
Be sure of your facts, of your measures and weights, 
Of your time, — he 's as fond as an Arab of dates ; 
You '11 be telling, perhaps, in your comical way, 
Of something you 've seen in the course of the day ; 
And, just as you 're tapering out the conclusion, 
You venture an ill-fated classic allusion, — 
The girls have all got their laughs ready, when, whack! 
The cougar comes down on your thunderstruck back ! 
You had left out a comma, — your Greek 's put in joint, 
And pointed at cost of your story's whole point. 
In the course of the evening you find chance for certain 



A FABLE FOR CRITICS 31 

Soft speeches to Anne, in the shade of the curtain : 
You tell her your heart can be likened to one flower, 
" And that, O most charming of women 's the sunflower, 
Which turns" — here a clear nasal voice, to your terror, 
From outside the curtain, says, " That 's all an error." 
As for him, he 's — no matter, he never grew tender, 
Sitting after a ball, with his feet on the fender, 
Shaping somebody's sweet features out of cigar smoke 
(Though he 'd willingly grant you that such doings are 

smoke) \ 
All women he damns with mutabile semper, 
And if ever he felt something like love's distemper, 
'T was tow'rds a young lady who spoke ancient Mex- 
ican, 
And assisted her father in making a lexicon ; 
Though I recollect hearing him get quite ferocious 
About Mary Clausum, the mistress of Grotius, 
Or something of that sort, — but, no more to bore ye 
With character-painting, 1 11 turn to my story. 

Now, Apollo, who finds it convenient sometimes 
To get his court clear of the makers of rhymes, 
The genus, I think it is called, irritabile, 
Every one of whom thinks himself treated most shab- 

bily, 
And nurses a — what is it ? — immedicabile, 



32 A FABLE FOR CRITICS 

Which keeps him at boiling-point, hot for a quarrel, 

As bitter as wormwood, and sourer than sorrel, 

If any poor devil but look at a laurel ; — 

Apollo, I say, being sick of their rioting 

(Though he sometimes acknowledged their verse had a 

quieting 
Effect after dinner, and seemed to suggest a 
Retreat to the shrine of a tranquil siesta), 
Kept our Hero at hand, who, by means of a bray, 
Which he gave to the life, drove the rabble away ; 
And if that would n't do, he was sure to succeed, 
If he took his review out and offered to read ; 
Or, failing in plans of this milder description, 
He would ask for their aid to get up a subscription, 
Considering that authorship was n't a rich craft, 
To print the "American drama of Witchcraft." 
" Stay, I '11 read you a scene," — but he hardly began, 
Ere Apollo shrieked " Help ! " and the authors all ran : 
And once, when these purgatives acted with less spirit, 
And the desperate case asked a remedy desperate, 
He drew from his pocket a foolscap epistle 
As camly as if 't were a nine-barrelled pistol, 
And threatened them all with the judgment to come, 
Of "A wondering Star's first impressions of Rome." 
" Stop ! stop ! " with their hands o'er their ears, screamed 

the Muses, 



A FABLE FOR CRITICS 33 

" He may go off and murder himself, if he chooses, 
'T was a means self-defence only sanctioned his trying, 
'T is mere massacre now that the enemy 's flying ; 
If he 's forced to 't again, and we happen to be there, 
Give us each a large handkerchief soaked in strong 
ether." 

I called this a " Fable for Critics ; " you think it 's 
More of a display of my rhythmical trinkets ; 
My plot, like an icicle, 's slender and slippery, 
Every moment more slender, and likely to slip awry, 
And the reader unwilling in loco desipere, 
Is free to jump over as much of my frippery 
As he fancies, and, if he 's a provident skipper, he 
May have like Odysseus control of the gales, 
And get safe to port, ere his patience quite fails; 
Moreover, although 't is a slender return 
For your toil and expense, yet my paper will burn, 
And, if you have manfully struggled thus far with me, 
You may e'en twist me up, and just light your cigar w r ith 

me : 
If too angry for that, you can tear me in pieces, 
And my membra disjecta consign to the breezes, 
A fate like great Ratzau's, whom one of those bores, 
Who beflead with bad verses poor Louis Quatorze, 
Describes (the first verse somehow ends with victoire), 



34 A FABLE FOR CRITICS 

As dispers ant par tout et ses membres et sa gloire ; 

Or, if I were over-desirous of earning 

A repute among noodles for classical learning, 

I could pick you a score of allusions, i-wis, 

As new as the jests of Didaskalos tis ; 

Better still, I could make out a good solid list 

From authors recondite who do not exist, — 

But that would be naughty : at least, I could twist 

Something out of Absyrtus, or turn your inquiries 

After Milton's prose metaphor, drawn from Osiris ; — 

But, as Cicero says he won't say this or that 

(A fetch, I must say, most transparent and flat), 

After saying whate'er he could possibly think of, — 

I simply will state that I pause on the brink of 

A mire, ankle-deep, of deliberate confusion, 

Made up of old jumbles of classic allusion : 

So, when you were thinking yourselves to be pitied, 

Just conceive how much harder your teeth you 'd have 

gritted, 
An 't were not for the dulness I 've kindly omitted. 

I 'd apologize here for my many digressions, 
Were it not that I 'm certain to trip into fresh ones 
('T is so hard to escape if you get in their mesh once) ; 
Just reflect, if you please, how 't is said by Horatius, 
That Masonides nods now and then, and, my gracious ! 



A FABLE FOR CRITICS 35 

It certainly does look a little bit ominous 

When he gets under way with ton cF apameibomenos . 

(Here a something occurs which I '11 just clap a rhyme 

to, 
And say it myself, ere a Zoilus have time to, — 
Any author a nap like Van Winkle's may take, 
If he only contrive to keep readers awake, 
But he '11 very soon find himself laid on the shelf, 
If they fall a-nodding when he nods himself). 

Once for all, to return, and to stay, will I, nill I — 
When Phcebus expressed his desire for a lily, 
Our Hero, whose homoeopathic sagacity 
With an ocean of zeal mixed his drop of capacity, 
Set off for the garden as fast as the wind 
(Or, to take a comparison more to my mind, 
As a sound politician leaves conscience behind), 
And leaped the low fence, as a party hack jumps 
O'er his principles, when something else turns up trumps. 

He was gone a long time, and Apollo, meanwhile, 
Went over some sonnets of his with a file, 
For, of all compositions, he thought that the sonnet 
Best repaid all the toil you expended upon it ; 
It should reach with one impulse the end of its course, 
And for one final blow collect all of its force j 




36 A FABLE FOR CRITICS 

Not a verse should be salient, but each one should tend 
With a wave-like up-gathering to break at the end ; 
So, condensing the strength here, there smoothing a wry 
kink, 

He was killing the time, when up walked Mr. D ; 

At a few steps behind him, a small man in glasses 

Went dodging about, muttering, "Mur- 
derers ! asses ! " 
i^P^rf^ From out of his pocket a paper he 'd 
take, 
:<f j^T\ With a proud look of martyrdom tied 
to its stake, 

And, reading a squib at himself, he 'd say, " Here I see 
'Gainst American letters a bloody conspiracy, 
They are all by my personal enemies written ; 
I must post an anonymous letter to Britain, 
And show that this gall is the merest suggestion 
Of spite at my zeal on the Copyright question, 
For, on this side the water, 't is prudent to pull 
O'er the eyes of the public their national wool, 
By accusing of slavish respect to John Bull 
All American authors who have more or less 
Of that anti- American humbug — success, 
While in private we 're always embracing the knees 
Of some twopenny editor over the seas, 
And licking his critical shoes, for you know 't is 



A FABLE FOR CRITICS $7 

The whole aim of our lives to get one English notice ; 
My American puffs I would willingly burn all 
(They 're all from one source, monthly, weekly, diur- 
nal) 
To get but a kick from a transmarine journal ! " 

So, culling the gibes of each critical scorner 
As if they were plums, and himself were Jack Horner, 
He came cautiously on, peeping round every corner, 
And into each hole where a weasel might pass in, 
Expecting the knife of some critic assassin, 
Who stabs to the heart with a caricature, 
Not so bad as those daubs of the Sun, to be sure, 
Yet done with a dagger-o'-type, whose vile portraits 
Disperse all one's good and condense all one's poor traits. 

Apollo looked up, hearing footsteps approaching, 

And slipped out of sight the new rhymes he was broach- 
ing, — 

«' Good day, Mr. D , I 'm happy to 

meet, 

With a scholar so ripe, and a critic so 
neat, 

Who through Grub Street the soul of a 
gentleman carries ; 

What news from that suburb of London and Paris 




38 A FABLE FOR CRITICS 

Which latterly makes such shrill claims to monopolize 
The credit of being the New World's metropolis ? " 

" Why, nothing of consequence, save this attack 
On my friend there, behind, by some pitiful hack, 
Who thinks every national author a poor one, 
That is n't a copy of something that 's foreign, 
And assaults the American Dick — " 

" Nay, 't is clear 
That your Damon there 's fond of a flea in his ear, 
And, if no one else furnished them gratis, on tick 
He would buy some himself, just to hear the old click ; 
Why, I honestly think, if some fool in Japan 
Should turn up his nose at the ' Poems on Man ' 
(Which contain many verses as fine, by the bye, 
As any that lately came under my eye), 
Your friend there by some inward instinct would know it,, 
Would get it translated, reprinted, and show it ; 
As a man might take off a high stock to exhibit 
The autograph round his own neck of the gibbet ; 
Nor would let it rest so, but fire column after column, 
Signed Cato, or Brutus, or something as solemn, 
By way of displaying his critical crosses, 
And tweaking that poor transatlantic proboscis, 
His broadsides resulting (this last there 's no doubt of) 



A FABLE FOR CRITICS 39 

In successively sinking the craft they 're fired out of. 

Now nobody knows when an author is hit, 

If he have not a public hysterical fit ; 

Let him only keep close in his snug garret's dim 

ether, 
And nobody 'd think of his foes — or of him either ; 
If an author have any least fibre of worth in him, 
Abuse would but tickle the organ of mirth in him j 
All the critics on earth cannot crush with their ban 
One word that 's in tune with the nature of man." 

" Well, perhaps so ; meanwhile I have brought you a 

book, 
Into which if you '11 just have the goodness to look, 
You may feel so delighted (when once you are through 

it) 
As to deem it not unworth your while to review it, 
And I think I can promise your thoughts, if you do, 
A place in the next Democratic Review." 

" The most thankless of gods you must surely have 
thought me, 
For this is the forty-fourth copy you 've brought me, 
I have giv r en them away, or at least I have tried, 
But I 've forty-two left, standing all side by side 
(The man who accepted that one copy died), — 



40 A FABLE FOR CRITICS 

From one end of a shelf to the other they reach, 

' With the author's respects ' neatly written in each. 

The publisher, sure, will proclaim a Te Deum, 

When he hears of that order the British Museum 

Has sent for one set of what books were first printed 

In America, little or big, — for 't is hinted 

That this is the first truly tangible hope he 

Has ever had raised for the sale of a copy. 

I 've thought very often 't would be a good thing 

In all public collections of books, if a wing 

Were set off by itself, like the seas from the dry lands, 

Marked Literature suited to desolate islands, 

And filled with such books as could never be read 

Save by readers of proofs, forced to do it for bread, — 

Such books as one 's wrecked on in small country taverns, 

Such as hermits might mortify over in caverns, 

Such as Satan, if printing had then been invented, 

As the climax of woe, would to Job have presented, 

Such as Crusoe might dip in, although there are few so 

Outrageously cornered by fate as poor Crusoe ; 

And since the philanthropists just now are banging 

And gibbeting all who 're in favor of hanging 

(Though Cheever has proved that the Bible and Altar 

Were let down from Heaven at the end of a halter, 

And that vital religion would dull and grow callous, 

Unrefreshed, now and then, with a sniff of the gallows), — 



A FABLE FOR CRITICS 4 1 

And folks are beginning to think it looks odd, 
To choke a poor scamp for the glory of God ; 
And that He who esteems the Virginia reel 
A bait to draw saints from their spiritual weal, 
And regards the quadrille as a far greater knavery 
Than crushing His African children with slavery, — 
Since all who take part in a waltz or cotillon 
Are mounted for hell on the Devil's own pillion, 
Who, as every true orthodox Christian well knows, 
Approaches the heart through the door of the toes, — 
That He, I was saying, whose judgments are stored 
For such as take steps in despite of His word, 
Should look with delight on the agonized prancing 
Of a wretch who has not the least ground for his dancing, 
While the State, standing by, sings a verse from the 

Psalter 
About offering to God on his favorite halter, 
And, when the legs droop from their twitching divergence, 
Sells the clothes to a Jew, and the corpse to the sur- 
geons ; — 
Now, instead of all this, I think I can direct you all 
To a criminal code both humane and effectual ; — 
I propose to shut up every doer of wrong 
With these desperate books, for such term, short or long, 
As by statute in such cases made and provided, 
Shall be by your wise legislators decided : 



42 A FABLE FOR CRITICS 

Thus : Let murderers be shut, to grow wiser and 

cooler, 
At hard labor for life on the works of Miss ; 
Petty thieves kept from flagranter crimes by their 

fears, 
Shall peruse Yankee Doodle a blank term of years, — 
That American Punch, like the English, no doubt, — 
Just the sugar and lemons and spirit left out. 

" But stay, here comes Tityrus Griswold, and leads on 
The flocks whom he first plucks alive, 
and then feeds on, — 
J*^ A loud-cackling swarm, in whose feath- 
ers warm-drest, 
He goes for as perfect a — swan as the 
rest. 

" There comes Emerson first, whose rich words, every 

one, 
Are like gold nails in temples to hang trophies on, 
Whose prose is grand verse, while his verse, the Lord 

knows, 
Is some of it pr — No, 't is not even prose ; 
I 'm speaking of metres ; some poems have welled 
From those rare depths of soul that have ne'er been 

excelled ; 




A FABLE FOR CRITICS 43 

They 're not epics, but that does n't matter a pin, 

In creating, the only hard thing 's to begin ; 

A grass-blade 's no easier to make than an oak ; 

If you 've once found the way, you 've achieved the grand 

stroke ; 
In the worst of his poems are mines of rich matter, 

But thrown in a heap with a crash and a clatter ; 

Now it is not one thing nor another alone 

Makes a poem, but rather the general tone, 

The something pervading, uniting the whole, 

The before unconceived, unconceivable soul, 

So that just in removing this trifle or that, you 

Take away, as it were, a chief limb of the statue ; 

Roots, wood, bark, and leaves singly perfect may be, 

But clapt hodge-podge together, they don't make a 

tree. 

" But, to come back to Emerson (whom, 

by the way, 
I believe we left waiting), — his is, we 

may say, 
A Greek head on right Yankee shoulders, 

whose range 

Has Olympus for one pole, for t' other the Exchange ; 
He seems, to my thinking (although I 'm afraid 
The comparison must, long ere this, have been made), 




44 A FABLE FOR CRITICS 

A Plotinus-Montaigne, where the Egyptian's gold mist 

And the Gascon's shrewd wit cheek-by-jowl coexist ; 

All admire, and yet scarcely six converts he 's got 

To I don't (nor they either) exactly know what ; 

For though he builds glorious temples, 't is odd 

He leaves never a doorway to get in a god. ,j 

'T is refreshing to old-fashioned people like me 

To meet such a primitive Pagan as he, 

In whose mind all creation is duly respected 

As parts of himself — just a little projected ; 

And who 's willing to worship the stars and the sun, 

A convert to — nothing but Emerson. 

So perfect a balance there is in his head, 

That he talks of things sometimes" as if they were 

dead ; 
Life, nature, love, God, and affairs of that sort, 
He looks at as merely ideas ; in short, 
As if they were fossils stuck round in a cabinet, 
Of such vast extent that our earth 's a mere dab in it ; 
Composed just as he is inclined to conjecture her, 
Namely, one part pure earth, ninety-nine parts pure lec- 
turer ; 
You are filled with delight at his clear demonstration, 
Each figure, word, gesture just fits the occasion, 
With the quiet precision of science he '11 sort 'em, 
But you can't help suspecting the whole a post mortem. 




A FABLE FOR CRITICS 45 

" There are persons, mole-blind to the 

soul's make and style, 
Who insist on a likeness 'twixt him and 

Carlyle ; 
To compare him with Plato would be 

vastly fairer, 
Carlyle 's the more burly, but E. is the rarer ; 
He sees fewer objects, but clearlier, truelier, 
If C. 's as original, E. 's more peculiar ; 
That he 's more of a man you might say of the one, 
Of the other he 's more of an Emerson ; 
C. 's the Titan, as shaggy of mind as of limb, — 
E. the clear-eyed Olympian, rapid and slim ; 
The one 's two thirds Norseman, the other half Greek, 
Where the one 's most abounding, the other 's to seek ; 
C. 's generals require to be seen in the mass, — 
E.'s specialties gain if enlarged by the glass ; 
C. gives nature and God his own fits of the blues, 
And rims common-sense things with mystical hues, — 
E. sits in a mystery calm and intense, 
And looks coolly around him with sharp common-sense ; 
C. shows you how every-day matters unite 
With the dim transdiurnal recesses of night, — 
While E., in a plain, preternatural way, 
Makes mysteries matters of mere every day ; 
C. draws all his characters quite a la Fuseli, — 



46 A FABLE FOR CRITICS 

Not sketching their bundles of muscles and thews illy, 
He paints with a brush so untamed and profuse, 
They seem nothing but bundles of muscles and thews ; 
E. is rather like Flaxman, lines strait and severe, 
And a colorless outline, but full, round, and clear ; — 
To the men he thinks worthy he frankly accords 
The design of a white marble statue in words. 
C. labors to get at the centre, and then 
Take a reckoning from there of his actions and men ; 
E. calmly assumes the said centre as granted, 
And, given himself, has whatever is wanted. 

' " He has imitators in scores, who omit 
No part of the man but his wisdom and wit, — 
Who go carefully o'er the sky-blue of his brain, 
And when he has skimmed it once, skim it again ; 
If at all they resemble him, you may be sure it is 
Because their shoals mirror his mists and obscurities, 
As a mud-puddle seems deep as heaven for a minute, 
While a cloud that floats o'er is reflected within it. 

" There comes , for instance ; to see him 's rare 

sport, 
Tread in Emerson's tracks with legs painfully short ; 
How he jumps, how he strains, and gets red in the face, 
To keep step with the mystagogue's natural pace ! 



A FABLE FOR CRITICS tf 

He follows as close as a stick to a rocket, 

His fingers exploring the prophet's each pocket. 

Fie, for shame, brother bard ; with good fruit of your 

own, 
Can't you let Neighbor Emerson's orchards alone ? 
Besides, 't is no use, you '11 not not find e'en a core, — 

has picked up all the windfalls before. 

They might strip every tree, and E. never would catch 'em, 
His Hesperides have no rude dragon to watch 'em ; 
When they send him a dishful, and ask him to try 'em, 
He never suspects how the sly rogues came by 'em, 
He wonders why 't is there are none such his trees on, 
And thinks 'em the best he has tasted this season. 

" Yonder, calm as a cloud, Alcott 
stalks in a dream, 
And fancies himself in thy groves, Aca- 
deme, 
With the Parthenon nigh, and the olive- 
trees o'er him, 
And never an act to perplex him or bore him, 
With a snug room at Plato's when night comes, to walk 

to, 
And people from morning till midnight to talk to, 
And from midnight till morning, nor snore in their listen- 
ing;— 




48 A FABLE FOR CRITICS 

So he muses, his face with the joy of it glistening, 

For his highest conceit of a happiest state is 

Where they'd live upon acorns, and hear him talk gratis ; 




And indeed, I believe, no man ever talked better, — 
Each sentence hangs perfectly poised to a letter ; 
He seems piling words, but there 's royal dust hid 
In the heart of each sky-piercing pyramid. 
While he talks he is great, but goes out like a taper, 
If you shut him up closely with pen, ink, and paper ; 
Yet his fingers itch for 'em from morning till night, 
And he thinks he does wrong if he don't always write ; 
In this, as in all things, a lamb among men, 
He goes to sure death when he goes to his pen. 

" Close behind him is Brownson, his mouth very full 
With attempting to gulp a Gregorian 

bull; 
Who contrives, spite of that, to pour out 
as he goes 
1^ A stream of transparent and forcible 
prose j 

He shifts quite about, then proceeds to expound 
That 't is merely the earth, not himself, that turns round, 
And wishes it clearly impressed on your mind 
That the weathercock rules and not follows the wind ; 
Proving first, then as deftly confuting each side, 




A FABLE FOR CRITICS 



49 



With no doctrine pleased that 's not somewhere denied, 

He lays the denier away on the shelf, 

And then — down beside him lies gravely himself. 

He 's the Salt River boatman, who always stands willing 

To convey friend or foe without charging a shilling, 

And so fond of the trip that, when leisure 's to spare, 

He '11 row himself up, if he can't get a fare. 

The worst of it is, that his logic 's so strong, 

That of two sides he commonly chooses the wrong ; 

If there is only one, why, he '11 split it in two, 

And first pummel this half, then that, black and blue. 

That white 's white needs no proof, but it takes a deep 

fellow 
To prove it jet-black, and that jet-black is yellow. 
He offers the true faith to drink in a sieve, — 
When it reaches your lips there 's naught left to believe 
But a few silly- (syllo-, I mean) -gisms that squat 'em 
Like tadpoles, o'erjoyed with the mud at the bottom. , 




" There is Willis, all natty and jaunty 
and gay, 
Who says his best things in so foppish a |j1w ^ \i A 

With conceits and pet phrases so thickly A j^^^x 

o'erlaying 'em, 
That one hardly knows whether to thank 

him for saying 'em; 



coT? 



5<D A FABLE FOR CRITICS 

Over-ornament ruins both poem and prose, 
Just conceive of a Muse with a ring in her nose ! 
His prose had a natural grace of its own, 
And enough of it too, if he 'd let it alone ; 
But he twitches and jerks so, one fairly gets tired, 
And is forced to forgive where one might have ad- 
mired j 
Yet whenever it slips away free and unlaced, 
It runs like a stream with a musical waste, 
And gurgles along with the liquidest sweep ; — 
'T is not deep as a river, but who 'd have it deep ? 
In a country where scarcely a village is found 
That has not its author sublime and profound, 
For some one to be slightly shallow 's a duty, 
And Willis's shallowness makes half his beauty. 
His prose winds along with a blithe, gurgling error, 
And reflects all of Heaven it can see in its mirror : 
'T is a narrowish strip, but it is not an artifice ; 
'T is the true out - of - doors with its genuine hearty 

phiz ; 
It is Nature herself, and there 's something in that, 
Since most brains reflect but the crown of a hat. 
Few volumes I know to read under a tree, 
More truly delightful than his A PAbri, 
With the shadows of leaves flowing over your book, 
Like ripple-shades netting the bed of a brook ; 



A FABLE FOR CRITICS 5 1 

With June coming softly your shoulder to look over, 
Breezes waiting to turn every leaf of your book over, 
And Nature to criticise still as you read, — 
The page that bears that is a rare one indeed. 

" He 's so innate a Cockney, that had he been born 
Where plain bare skin 's the only full-dress that is 

worn, 
He 'd have given his own such an air that you 'd say 
'T had been made by a tailor to lounge in Broadway. 
His nature 's a glass of champagne with the foam 

on't, 
As tender as Fletcher, as witty as Beaumont ; 
So his best things are done in the flush of the moment ; 
If he wait, all is spoiled ; he may stir it and shake it, 
But, the fixed air once gone, he can never remake it. 
He might be a marvel of easy delightfulness, 
If he would not sometimes leave the r out of sprightful- 

ness ; 
And he ought to let Scripture alone — 't is self-slaughter, 
For nobody likes inspiration-and-water. 
He 'd have been just the fellow to sup at the Mermaid, 
Cracking jokes at rare Ben, with an eye to the bar- 
maid, 
His wit running up as Canary ran down, — 
The topmost bright bubble on the wave of The Town. 





52 A FABLE FOR CRITICS 

" Here comes Parker, the Orson of parsons, a man 

Whom the Church undertook to put un 



j\ der her ban 

"? "S (The Church of Socinus, I mean), — his 
opinions 
Being So- (ultra) -cinian, they shocked 
the Socinians ; 
They believed — faith, I 'm puzzled — I think I may call 
Their belief a believing in nothing at all, 
Or something of that sort ; I know they all went 
For a general union of total dissent : 
He went a step farther ; without cough or hem, 
He frankly avowed he believed not in them ; 
And, before he could be jumbled up or prevented, 
From their orthodox kind of dissent he dissented. 
There was heresy here, you perceive, for the right 
Of privately judging means simply that light 
Has been granted to me, for deciding on you ; 
And in happier times, before Atheism grew, 
The deed contained clauses for cooking you too : 
Now at Xerxes and Knut we all laugh, yet our foot 
With the same wave is wet that mocked Xerxes and 

Knut, 
And we all entertain a secure private notion, 
That our Thus far ! will have a great weight with the 
ocean. 



A FABLE FOR CRITICS 53 

'T was so with our liberal Christians : they bore 
With sincerest conviction their chairs to the shore ; 
They brandished their worn theological birches, 
Bade natural progress keep out of the Churches, 
And expected the lines they had drawn to prevail 
With the fast-rising tide to keep out of their pale ; 
They had formerly dammed the Pontifical See, 
And the same thing, they thought, would do nicely for P. j 
But he turned up his nose at their mumming and sham- 
ming, 

And cared (shall I say ?) not a d for their damming ; 

So they first read him out of their church, and next min- 
ute 
Turned round and declared he had never been in it. 
But the ban was too small or the man was too big, 
For he recks not their bells, books, and candles a fig 
(He scarce looks like a man who would stay treated 

shabbily, 
Sophroniscus' son's head o'er the features of Rabelais) ; 
He bangs and bethwacks them, — their backs he salutes 
With the whole tree of knowledge torn up by the roots ; 
His sermons with satire are plenteously verjuiced, 
And he talks in one breath of Confutzee, Cass, Zerduscht, 
Jack Robinson, Peter the Hermit, Strap, Dathan, 
Cush, Pitt (not the bottomless, that he 's no faith in), 
Pan, Pillicock, Shakespeare, Paul, Toots, Monsieur Ton- 
son, 



54 A FABLE FOR CRITICS 

Aldebaran, Alcander, Ben Khorat, Ben Jonson, 

Thoth, Richter, Joe Smith, Father Paul, Judah Monis, 

Musaeus, Muretus, hem, — /x Scorpionis, 

Maccabee, Maccaboy, Mac — Mac — ah ! Machiavelli, • 

Condorcet, Count d'Orsay, Conder, Say, Ganganelli, 

Orion, O'Connell, the Chevalier D'O, 

(See the Memoirs of Sully,) to rrav, the great toe 

Of the statue of Jupiter, now made to pass 

For that of Jew Peter by good Romish brass, 

(You may add for yourselves, for I find it a bore, 

All the names you have ever, or not, heard before, 

And when you 've done that — why, invent a few 

more.) 
His hearers can't tell you on Sunday beforehand, 
If in that day's discourse they '11 be Bibled or Koraned, 
For he 's seized the idea (by his martyrdom fired) 
That all men (not orthodox) may be inspired ; 
Yet though wisdom profane with his creed he may weave 

in, 
He makes it quite clear what he does rft believe in, 
While some, who decry him, think all Kingdom Come 
Is a sort of a, kind of a, species of Hum, 
Of which, as it were, so to speak, not a crumb 
Would be left, if we did n't keep carefully mum, 
And, to make a clean breast, that 't is perfectly plain 
That all kinds of wisdom are somewhat profane ; 



A FABLE FOR CRITICS 55 

Now P.'s creed than this may be lighter or darker, 
But in one thing, 't is clear, he has faith, namely — Parker, 
And this is what makes him the crowd-drawing preacher, 
There 's a background of god to each hard-working 

feature, 
Every word that he speaks has been fierily furnaeed 
In the blast of a life that has struggled in earnest : 
There he stands, looking more like a ploughman than 

priest, 
If not dreadfully awkward, not graceful at least, 
His gestures all downwright and same, if you will, 
As of brown-fisted Hobnail in hoeing a drill ; 
But his periods fall on you, stroke after stroke, 
Like the blows of a lumberer felling an oak, 
You forget the man wholly, you 're thankful to meet 
With a preacher who smacks of the field and the street, 
And to hear, you 're not over-particular whence, 
Almost Taylor's profusion, quite Latimer's sense. 

" There is Bryant, as quiet, as cool, and 

as dignified, 
As a smooth, silent iceberg, that never is 

ignified, 
Save when by reflection 't is kindled o' 

nights 
With a semblance of flame by the chill Northern Lights. 




56 A FABLE FOR CRITICS 

He may rank (Griswold says so) first bard of your nation 
(There 's no doubt that he stands in supreme ice-olation), 
Your topmost Parnassus he may set his heel on, 
But no warm applauses come, peal following peal on, — 
He 's too smooth and too polished to hang any zeal on : 
Unqualified merits, I '11 grant, if you choose, he has 'em, 
But he lacks the one merit of kindling enthusiasm ; 
If he stir you at all, it is just, on my soul, 
Like being stirred up with the very North Pole. 

" He is very nice reading in summer, but inter 
JVbs, we don't want extra freezing in winter ; 
Take him up in the depth of July, my advice is, 
When you feel an Egyptian devotion to ices. 
But, deduct all you can, there 's enough that 's right good 

in him, 
He has a true soul for field, river, and wood in him ; 
And his heart, in the midst of brick walls, or where'er it 

is, 
Glows, softens, and thrills with the tenderest charities — 
To you mortals that delve in this trade-ridden planet ? 
No, to old Berkshire's hills, with their limestone and 

granite. 
If you 're one who in loco (add/^? here) desipis, 
You will get of his outermost heart (as I guess) a piece ; 
But you 'd get deeper down if you came as a precipice, 



A FABLE FOR CRITICS 57 

And would break the last seal of its inwardest fountain, 
If you only could palm yourself off for a mountain. 
Mr. Quivis, or somebody quite as discerning, 
Some scholar who 's hourly expecting his learning, 
Calls B. the American Wordsworth ; but Wordsworth 
May be rated at more than your whole tuneful herd 's 

worth. 
No, don't be absurd, he 's an excellent Bryant ; 
But, my friends, you '11 endanger the life of your client, 
By attempting to stretch him up into a giant : 
If you choose to compare him, I think there are two per- 
-sons fit for a parallel — Thompson and Cowper; 1 
I don't mean exactly, — there 's something of each, 
There 's T.'s love of nature, C.'s penchant to preach ; 
Just mix up their minds so that C.'s spice of craziness 
Shall balance and neutralize T.'s turn for laziness, 
And it gives you a brain cool, quite frictionless, quiet, 
Whose internal police nips the buds of all riot, — 
A brain like a permanent strait-jacket put on 
The heart that strives vainly to burst off a button, — 
A brain which, without being slow or mechanic, 
Does more than a larger less drilled, more volcanic ; 

1 To demonstrate quickly and easily how per- 
-versely absurd 't is to sound this name Cowper, 
As people in general call him named super, 
I remark that he rhymes it himself with horse-trooper. 



5 8 A FABLE FOR CRITICS 

He 's a Cowper condensed, with no craziness bitten, 
And the advantage that Wordsworth before him had 
written. 

" But, my dear little bardlings, don't prick up your ears 
Nor suppose I would rank you and Bryant as peers ; 
If I call him an iceberg, I don't mean to say 
There is nothing in that which is grand in its way : 
He is almost the one of your poets that knows 
How much grace, strength, and dignity lie in Repose ; 
If he sometimes fall short, he is too wise to mar 
His thought's modest fulness by going too far ; 
'T would be well if your authors should all make a trial 
Of what virtue there is in severe self-denial, 
And measure their writings by Hesiod's staff, 
Which teaches that all has less value than half. 

" There is Whittier, whose swelling 
and vehement heart 
Strains the strait-breasted drab of 

the Quaker apart, 
And reveals the live Man, still su- 
preme and erect, 
Underneath the bemummying wrappers of sect • 
There was ne'er a man born who had more of the swing 
Of the true lyric bard and all that kind of thing ; 




A FABLE FOR CRITICS 59 

And his failures arise (though he seem not to know it) 
From the very same cause that has made him a poet, — 
A fervor of mind which knows no separation 
'Twixt simple excitement and pure inspiration, 
As my Pythoness erst sometimes erred from not knowing 
If 't were I or mere wind through her tripod was blowing ; 
Let his mind once get head in its favorite direction 
And the torrent of verse bursts the dams of reflection, 
While, borne with the rush of the metre along, 
The poet may chance to go right or go wrong, 
Content with the whirl and delirium of song ; 
Then his grammar 's not always correct, nor his rhymes, 
And he 's prone to repeat his own lyrics sometimes, 
Not his best, though, for those are struck off at white- 
heats 
When the heart in his breast like a trip-hammer beats, 
And can ne'er be repeated again any more 
Than they could have been carefully plotted before : 
Like old what 's-his-name there at the battle of Hastings 
(Who, however, gave more than mere rhythmical bast- 
ings), 
Our Quaker leads off metaphorical fights 
For reform and whatever they call human rights, 
Both singing and striking in front of the war, 
And hitting his foes with the mallet of Thor ; 
Anne haec, one exclaims, on beholding his knocks, 



60 A FABLE FOR CRITICS 

Vestis filii tui, O leather-clad Fox ? 

Can that be thy son, in the battle's mid din, 

Preaching brotherly love and then driving it in 

To the brain of the tough old Goliath of sin, 

With the smoothest of pebbles from Castaly's spring 

Impressed on his hard moral sense with a sling ? 

" All honor and praise to the right-hearted bard 
Who was true to The Voice when such service was hard, 
Who himself was so free he dared sing for the slave 
When to look but a protest in silence was brave ; 
All honor and praise to the women and men 
Who spoke out for the dumb and the down-trodden 

then! 
It needs not to name them, already for each 
I see History preparing the statue and niche ; 
They were harsh, but shall you be so shocked at hard 

words 
Who have beaten your pruning-hooks up into swords, 
Whose rewards and hurrahs men are surer to gain 
By the reaping of men and of women than grain ? 
Why should you stand aghast at their fierce wordy 

war, if •► 

You scalp one another for Bank or for Tariff ? 
Your calling them cut-throats and knaves all day long 
Doesn't prove that the use of hard language is wrong ; 



A FABLE FOR CRITICS 6 1 

While the World's heart beats quicker to think of such 

men 
As signed Tyranny's doom with a bloody steel-pen, 
While on Fourth- of -Julys beardless orators fright one 
With hints at Harmodius and Aristogeiton, 
You need not look shy at your sisters and brothers 
Who stab with sharp words for the freedom of others ; — 
No, a wreath, twine a wreath for the loyal and true 
Who, for sake of the many, dared stand with the few. 
Not of blood-spattered laurel for enemies braved, 
But of broad, peaceful oak-leaves for citizens saved ! 

"Here comes Dana, abstractedly 
loitering along, 
Involved in a paulo-post-future of song, 
Who '11 be going to write what '11 never 

be written 
Till the Muse, ere he think of it, gives 

him the mitten, — 
Who is so well aware of how things should be done, 
That his own works displease him before they 're be- 
gun, — 
Who so well all that makes up good poetry knows, 
That the best of his poems is written in prose ; 
All saddled and bridled stood Pegasus waiting, 
He was booted and spurred, but he loitered debating; 




62 A FABLE FOR CRITICS 

In a very grave question his soul was immersed, — 

Which foot in the stirrup he ought to put first j 

And, while this point and that he judicially dwelt on, 

He, somehow or other, had written Paul Felton, 

Whose beauties or faults, whichsoever you see there, 

You '11 allow only genius could hit upon either. 

That he once was the Idle Man none will deplore, 

But I fear he will never be anything more ; 

The ocean of song heaves and glitters before him, 

The depth and the vastness and longing sweep o'er him, 

He knows every breaker and shoal on the chart, 

He has the Coast Pilot and so on by heart, 

Yet he spends his whole life, like the man in the fable, 

In learning to swim on his library-table. 

"There swaggers John Neal, who has 

wasted in Maine 
The sinews and cords of his pugilist 

brain, 
Who might have been poet, but that, in 
its stead, he 
Preferred to believe that he was so already ; 
Too hasty to wait till Art's ripe fruit should drop, 
He must pelt down an unripe and colicky crop ; 
Who took to the law, and had this sterling plea for it, 
It required him to quarrel, and paid him a fee for it ; 




A FABLE FOR CRITICS 63 

A man who 's made less than he might have, because 

He always has thought himself more than he was, — 

Who, with very good natural gifts as a bard, 

Broke the strings of his lyre out by striking too hard, 

And cracked half the notes of a truly fine voice, 

Because song drew less instant attention than noise. 

Ah, men do not know how much strength is in poise, 

That he goes the farthest who goes far enough, 

And that all beyond that is just bother and stuff. 

No vain man matures, he makes too much new wood ; 

His blooms are too thick for the fruit to be good ; 

'T is the modest man ripens, 't is he that achieves, 

Just what 's needed of sunshine and shade he receives ; 

Grapes, to mellow, require the cool dark of their leaves ; 

Neal wants balance ; he throws his mind always too 

far, 
Whisking out flocks of comets, but never a star ; 
He has so much muscle, and loves so to show it, 
That he strips himself naked to prove he 's a poet, 
And, to show he could leap Art's wide ditch, if he tried, 
Jumps clean o'er it, and into the hedge t'other side. 
He has strength, but there 's nothing about him in keep- 
ing ; 
One gets surelier onward by walking than leaping ; 
He has used his own sinews himself to distress, 
And had done vastly more had he done vastly less ; 




64 A FABLE FOR CRITICS 

In letters, too soon is as bad as too late ; 

Could he only have waited he might have been great ; 

But he plumped into Helicon up to the waist, 

And muddied the stream ere he took his first taste. 

" There is Hawthorne, with genius so 

shrinking and rare 
That you hardly at first see the strength 

that is there ; 
^S. A frame so robust, with a nature so 
/ sweet, 

So earnest, so graceful, so lithe and so fleet, 
Is worth a descent from Olympus to meet ; 
'Tis as if a rough oak that for ages had stood, 
With his gnarled bony branches like ribs of the wood, 
Should bloom, after cycles of struggle and scathe, 
With a single anemone trembly and rathe ; 
His strength is so tender, his wildness so meek, 
That a suitable parallel sets one to seek, — 
He 's a John Bunyan Fouque, a Puritan Tieck ; 
When Nature was shaping him clay, was not granted 
For making so full-sized a man as she wanted, 
So, to fill out her model, a little she spared 
From some finer-grained stuff for a woman prepared, 
And she could not have hit a more excellent plan 
For making him fully and perfectly man. 




A FABLE FOR CRITICS 65 

The success of her scheme gave her so much delight, 
That she tried it again, shortly after, 

in Dwight ; 
Only, while she was kneading and 

shaping the clay, 
She sang to her work in her sweet 

childish way, 
And found, when she 'd put the last 

touch to his soul, 
That the music had somehow got mixed with the whole. 

" Here 's Cooper, who 's written six volumes to show 
He 's as good as a lord : well, let 's grant that he 's so ; 
If a person prefer that description of praise, 
Why, a coronet 's certainly cheaper than bays ; 
But he need take no pains to convince us he 's not 
(As his enemies say) the American Scott. 
Choose any twelve men, and let C. read aloud 
That one of his novels of which he's -most proud, 
And I 'd lay any bet that, without ever quitting 
Their box, they 'd be all, to a man, for acquitting. 
He has drawn you one character, though, that is new, 
One wildflower he 's plucked that is wet with the dew 
Of this fresh Western world, and, the thing not to 

mince, 
He has done naught but copy it ill ever since ; 



66 A FABLE FOR CRITICS 

His Indians, with proper respect be it said, 
Are just Natty Bumppo, daubed over with red, 
And his very Long Toms are the same useful Nat, 
Rigged up in duck pants and a sou'wester hat 
(Though once in a coffin, a good chance was found 
To have slipped the old fellow away underground). 
All his other men-figures are clothes upon sticks, 
The derniere chemise of a man in a fix 
(As a captain besieged, when his garrison 's small, 
Sets up caps upon poles to be seen o'er the wall) ; 
And the women he draws from one model don't vary, 
All sappy as maples and flat as a prairie. 
When a character 's wanted, he goes to the task 
As a cooper would do in composing a cask ; 
He picks out the staves, of their qualities heedful, 
Just hoops them together as tight as is needful, 
And, if the best fortune should crown the attempt, he 
Has made at the most something wooden and empty. 

" Don't suppose I would underrate 
Cooper's abilities ; 
If I thought you 'd do that, I should 

feel very ill at ease ; 
The men who have given to one char- 
acter life 
And objective existence are not very rife; 




A FABLE FOR CRITICS 6? 

You may number them all, both prose-writers and singers, 
Without overrunning the bounds of your fingers, 
And Natty won't go to oblivion quicker 
Than Adams the parson or Primrose the vicar. 

" There is one thing in Cooper I like, too, and that is 
That on manners he lectures his countrymen gratis ; 
Not precisely so either, because, for a rarity, 
He is paid for his tickets in unpopularity. 
Now he may overcharge his American pictures, 
But you '11 grant there 's a good deal of truth in his stric- 
tures ; 
And I honor the man who is willing to sink 
Half his present repute for the freedom to think, 
And, when he has thought, be his cause strong or weak, 
Will risk t' other half for the freedom to speak, 
Caring naught for what vengeance the mob has in 

store, 
Let that mob be the upper ten thousand or lower. 

"There are truths you Americans need to be told, 
And it never '11 refute them to swagger and scold ; 
John Bull, looking o'er the Atlantic, in choler 
At your aptness for trade, says you worship the dollar ; 
But to scorn such eye-dollar-try 's what very few do, 
And John goes to that church as often as you do. 



68 A FABLE FOR CRITICS 

No matter what John says, don't try to outcrow him, 

'T is enough to go quietly on and outgrow him ; 

Like most fathers, Bull hates to see Number One 

Displacing himself in the mind of his son, 

And detests the same faults in himself he 'd neglected 

When he sees them again in his child's glass reflected ; 

To love one another you 're too like by half ; 

If he is a bull, you 're a pretty stout calf, 

And tear your own pasture for naught but to show 

What a nice pair of horns you're beginning to grow. 

" There are one or two things I should just like to 
hint, 
For you don't often get the truth told you in print ; 
The most of you (this is what strikes all beholders) 
Have a mental and physical stoop in the shoulders ; 
Though you ought to be free as the winds and the 

waves, 
You 've the gait and the manners of runaway slaves ; 
Though you brag of your New World, you don't half be- 
lieve in it ; 
And as much of the Old as is possible weave in it ; 
Your goddess of freedom, a tight, buxom girl, 
With lips like a cherry and teeth like a pearl, 
With eyes bold as Here's, and hair floating free, 
And full of the sun as the spray of the sea, 



A FABLE FOR CRITICS 69 

Who can sing at a husking or romp at a shearing, 
Who can trip through the forests alone without fear- 
ing, 
Who can drive home the cows with a song through the 

grass, 
Keeps glancing aside into Europe's cracked glass, 
Hides her red hands in gloves, pinches up her lithe 

waist, 
And makes herself wretched with transmarine taste ; 
She loses her fresh country charm when she takes 
Any mirror except her own rivers and lakes. 

" You steal Englishmen's books and think English- 
men's thought, 
With their salt on her tail your wild eagle is caught ; 
Your literature suits its each whisper and motion 
To what will be thought of it over the ocean • 
The cast clothes of Europe your statesmanship tries 
And mumbles again the old blarneys and lies \ — 
Forget Europe wholly, your veins throb with blood, 
To which the dull current in hers is but mud ; 
Let her sneer, let her say your experiment fails, 
In her voice there 's a tremble e'en now while she 

rails, 
And your shore will soon be in the nature of things 
Covered thick with gilt drift-wood of castaway kings, 



JO A FABLE FOR CRITICS 

Where alone, as it were in a Longfellow's Waif 
Her fugitive pieces will find themselves safe. 

my friends, thank your god, if you have one, that he 
'Twixt the Old World and you set the gulf of a sea ; 

Be strong-backed, brown-handed, upright as your pines, 

By the scale of a hemisphere shape your designs, 

Be true to yourselves and this new nineteenth age, 

As a statue by Powers, or a picture by Page, 

Plough, sail, forge, build, carve, paint, make all over 

new, 
To your own New- World instincts contrive to be true, 
Keep your ears open wide to the Future's first call, 
Be whatever you will, but yourselves first of all, 
Stand fronting the dawn on Toil's heaven-scaling peaks, 
And become my new race of more practical Greeks. — 
Hem! your likeness at present, I shudder to tell o't, 
Is that you have your slaves, and the Greek had his 

helot." 

Here a gentleman present, who had in his attic 
More pepper than brains, shrieked, — " The man 's a fa- 
natic, 

1 'm a capital tailor with warm tar and feathers, 

And will make him a suit that '11 serve in all weathers ; 
But we '11 argue the point first, I 'm willing to reason 't, 
Palaver before condemnation 's but decent ; 



A FABLE FOR CRITICS J\ 

So, through my humble person, Humanity begs 

Of the friends of true freedom a loan of bad eggs." 

But Apollo let one such a look of his show forth 

As when rji'e vvktl ioiKws, and so forth, 

And the gentleman somehow slunk out of the way, 

But, as he was going, gained courage to say, — 

" At slavery in the abstract my whole soul rebels, 

I am as strongly opposed to 't as any one else." 

" Ay, no doubt, but whenever I 've happened to meet 

With a wrong or a crime, it is always concrete," 

Answered Phoebus severely ; then turning to us, 

" The mistake of such fellows as just made the fuss 

Is only in taking a great busy nation 

For a part of their pitiful cotton-plantation. — 

But there comes Miranda, Zeus ! where shall I flee to ? 

She Has such a penchant for bothering me too ! 

She always keeps asking if I don't observe a 

Particular likeness 'twixt her and Minerva ; 

She tells me my efforts in verse are quite clever ; — 

She 's been travelling now, and will be worse than ever ; 

One would think, though, a sharp-sighted noter she 'd be 

Of all that 's worth mentioning over the sea, 

For a woman must surely see well, if she try, 

The whole of whose being 's a capital I : 

She will take an old notion, and make it her own, 

By saying it o'er in her Sibylline tone, 



J2 A FABLE FOR CRITICS 

Or persuade you 't is something tremendously deep, 
By repeating it so as to put you to sleep ; 
And she well may defy any mortal to see through it, 
When once she has mixed up her infinite me through 

it. 
There is one thing she owns in her own single right, 
It is native and genuine — namely, her spite ; 
Though, when acting as censor, she privately blows 
A censer of vanity 'neath her own nose." 

Here Miranda came up, and said, 
" Phoebus ! you know 
That the Infinite Soul has its infinite 

woe, 
As I ought to know, having lived cheek 

by jowl, 
Since the day I was born, with the In- 
finite Soul ; 
I myself introduced, I myself, I alone, 
To my Land's better life authors solely my own, 
Who the sad heart of earth on their shoulders have 

taken, 
Whose works sound a depth by Life's quiet unshaken, 
Such as Shakespeare, for instance, the Bible, and Bacon, 
Not to mention my own works ; Time's nadir is fleet, 
And, as for myself, I 'm quite out of conceit " — 




A FABLE FOR CRITICS 73 

"Quite out of conceit ! I 'm enchanted to hear it," 
Cried Apollo aside. " Who 'd have thought she was near 

it? 
To be sure, one is apt to exhaust those commodities 
One uses too fast, yet in this case as odd it is 
As if Neptune should say to his turbots and whitings, 
'I'mas much out of salt as Miranda's own writings ' 
(Which, as she in her own happy manner has said, 
Sound a depth, for 'tis one of the functions of lead). 
She often has asked me if I could not find 
A place somewhere near me that suited her mind ; 
I know but a single one vacant, which she, 
With her rare talent that way, would fit to a T. 
And it would not imply any pause or cessation 
In the work she esteems her peculiar vocation, — 
She may enter on duty to-day, if she chooses, 
And remain Tiring-woman for life to the Muses." 

Miranda meanwhile has succeeded in driving 
Up into a corner, in spite of their striving, 
A small flock of terrified victims, and there, 
With an I-turn-the-crank-of-the-Universe air 
And a tone which, at least to my fancy, appears 
Not so much to be entering as boxing your ears, 
Is unfolding a tale (of herself, I surmise, 
For 'tis dotted as thick as a peacock's with I's). 



74 A FABLE FOR CRITICS 

Apropos of Miranda, I '11 rest on my oars 

And drift through a trifling digression on bores, 

For, though not wearing ear-rings in more majorum, 

Our ears are kept bored just as if we still wore 'em. 

There was one feudal custom worth keeping, at least. 

Roasted bores made a part of each well-ordered feast, 

And of all quiet pleasures the very ne plus 

Was in hunting wild bores as the tame ones hunt us. 

Archaeologians, I know, who have personal fears 

Of this wise application of hounds and of spears, 

Have tried to make out, with a zeal more than wonted, 

'T was a kind of wild swine that our ancestors hunted ; 

But I '11 never believe that the age which has strewn 

Europe o'er with cathedrals, and otherwise shown 

That it knew what was what, could by chance not have 

known 
(Spending, too, its chief time with its buff on, no doubt), 
Which beast 't would improve the world most to thin 

out. 
I divide bores myself, in the manner of rifles, 
Into two great divisions, regardless of trifles ; — 
There 's your smooth-bore and screw-bore, who do not 

much vary 
In the weight of cold lead they respectively carry. 
The smooth-bore is one in whose essence the mind 
Not a corner nor cranny to cling by can find; 



A FABLE FOR CRITICS 75 

You feel as in nightmares sometimes, when you slip 
Down a steep slated roof, where there's nothing to 

grip; 
You slide and you slide, the blank horror increases, — 
You had rather by far be at once smashed to pieces ; 
You fancy a whirlpool below white and frothing, 
And finally drop off and light upon — nothing. 
The screw-bore has twists in him, faint predilections 
For going just wrong in the tritest directions ; 
When he 's wrong he is flat, when he 's right he can't 

show it, 
He '11 tell you what Snooks said about the new poet, 1 
Or how Fogrum was outraged by Tennyson's Prin- 
cess ; 
He has spent all his spare time and intellect since his 
Birth in perusing, on each art and science, 
Just the books in which no one puts any reliance, 
And though nemo we 're told, horis omnibus safiit, 
The rule will not fit him, however you shape it, 
For he has a perennial foison of sappiness ; 
He has just enough force to spoil half your day's happi- 
ness, 
And to make him a sort of mosquito to be with, 
But just not enough to dispute or agree with. 

1 (If you call Snooks an owl, he will show by his looks 
That he 's morally certain you 're jealous of Snooks.) 



J6 A FABLE FOR CRITICS 

These sketches I made (not to be too explicit) 
From two honest fellows who made me a visit, 
And broke, like the tale of the Bear and the Fiddle, 
My reflections on Halleck short off by the middle ; 
I sha'n't now go into the subject more deeply, 
For I notice that some of my readers look sleep'ly ; 
I will barely remark that, 'mongst civilized nations, 
There 's none that displays more exemplary patience 
Under all sorts of boring, at all sorts of hours, 
From all sorts of desperate persons, than ours. 
Not to speak of our papers, our State legislatures, 
And other such trials for sensitive natures, 
Just look for a moment at Congress, — appalled, 
My fancy shrinks back from the phantom it called ; 
Why, there 's scarcely a member unworthy to frown 
'Neath what Fourier nicknames the Boreal crown ; 
Only think what that infinite bore-pow'r could do 
If applied with a utilitarian view ; 
Suppose, for example, we shipped it with care 
To Sahara 's great desert and let it bore there ; 
If they held one short session and did nothing else, 
They 'd fill the whole waste with Artesian wells. 
But 't is time now with pen phonographic to follow 
Through some more of his sketches our laughing 
Apollo : — 




A FABLE FOR CRITICS 77 

" There comes Harry Franco, and, as he draws near, 
You find that 's a smile which you took 

for a sneer ; 
One half of him contradicts t' other ; 

his wont 
Is to say very sharp things and do very 

blunt ; 
His manner 's as hard as his feelings 

are tender, 
And a sortie he '11 make when he means to surrender ; 
He 's in joke half the time when he seems to be stern- 
est, 
When he seems to be joking, be sure he 's in earn- 
est ; 
He has common sense in a way that 's uncommon, 
Hates humbug and cant, loves his friends like a wo- 
man, 
Builds his dislikes of cards and his friendships of oak, 
Loves a prejudice better than aught but a joke, 
Is half upright Quaker, half downright Come-outer, 
Loves Freedom too well to go stark mad about her, 
Quite artless himself, is a lover of Art, 
Shuts you out of his secrets and into his heart, 
And though not a poet, yet all must admire 
In his letters of Pinto his skill on the liar. 



7% 



A FABLE FOR CRITICS 




There comes Poe, with his raven, like Barnaby 
Rudge, 
Three fifths of him genius and two fifths 

sheer fudge, 
Who talks like a book of iambs and pen- 
tameters, 
x£*y£7 V In a way to make people of common 
/""" n ** sense damn metres, 

Who has written some things quite the best of their kind, 
But the heart somehow seems all squeezed out by the 

mind, 
Who — But hey-day ! What 's this ? Messieurs Math- 
ews and Poe, 
You must n't fling mud-balls at Longfellow so, 

Does it make a man worse that his 

character 's such 
As to make his friends love him (as 

you think) too much ? 
Why, there is not a bard at this mo- 
ment alive 
More willing than he that his fellows 
should thrive ; 
While you are abusing him thus, even now 
He would help either one of you out of a slough , 
You may say that he 's smooth and all that till you 're 
hoarse ; 




A FABLE FOR CRITICS 79 

But remember that elegance also is force ; 
After polishing granite as much as you will, 
The heart keeps its tough old persistency still ; 
Deduct all you can, that still keeps you at bay ; 
Why, he '11 live till men weary of Collins and Gray. 
I 'm not over-fond of Greek metres in English, 
To me rhyme 's a gain, so it be not too jinglish, 
And your modern hexameter verses are no more 
Like Greek ones than sleek Mr. Pope is like Homer • 
As the roar of the sea to the coo of a pigeon is, 
So, compared to your moderns, sounds old Melesigenes ; 
I may be too partial, the reason, perhaps, o't is 
That I 've heard the old blind man recite his own rhap- 
sodies, 
And my ear with that music impregnate may be, 
Like the poor exiled shell with the soul of the sea, 
Or as one can 't bear Strauss when his nature is 

cloven 
To its deeps within deeps by the stroke of Beethoven ; 
But, set that aside, and 't is truth that I speak, 
Had Theocritus written in English, not Greek, 
I believe that his exquisite sense would scarce change a 

line 
In that rare, tender, virgin-like pastoral Evangeline. 
That 's not ancient nor modern, its place is apart 
Where time has no sway, in the realm of pure Art, 




80 A FABLE FOR CRITICS 

'T is a shrine of retreat from Earth's hubbub and strife 
As quiet and chaste as the author's own life. 

" There comes Philothea, her face all 
aglow, 
She has just been dividing some poor 

creature's woe, 
And can't tell which pleases her most, 
to relieve 

His want, or his story to hear and believe ; 
No doubt against many deep griefs she prevails, 
For her ear is the refuge of destitute tales ; 
She knows well that silence is sorrow's best food, 
And that talking draws off from the heart its black 

blood, 
So she '11 listen with patience and let you unfold 
Your bundle of rags as 't were pure cloth of gold, 
Which, indeed, it all turns to as soon as she 's touched it, 
And (to borrow a phrase from the nursery) mucked it ; 
She has such a musical taste, she will go 
Any distance to hear one who draws a long bow ; 
She will swallow a wonder by mere might and main, 
And thinks it Geometry's fault if she's fain 
To consider things flat, inasmuch as they 're plain ; 
Facts with her are accomplished, as Frenchmen would 
say,— 



A FABLE FOR CRITICS 8 1 

They will prove all she wishes them to either way, — 

And, as fact lies on this side or that, we must try, 

If we 're seeking the truth, to find where it don't lie ; 

I was telling her once of a marvellous aloe 

That for thousands of years had looked spindling and 

sallow, 
And, though nursed by the fruitfullest powers of mud, 
Had never vouchsafed e'en so much as a bud, 
Till its owner remarked (as a sailor, you know, 
Often will in a calm) that it never would blow, 
For he wished to exhibit the plant, and designed 
That its blowing should help him in raising the wind ; 
At last it was told him that if he should water 
Its roots with the blood of his unmarried daughter 
(Who was born as her mother, a Calvinist, said, 
With William Law's serious caul on her head), 
It would blow as the obstinate breeze did when by a 
Like decree of her father died Iphigenia ; 
At first he declared he himself would be blowed 
Ere his conscience with such a foul crime he would 

load, 
But the thought, coming oft, grew less dark than before, 
And he mused, as each creditor knocked at his door, 
If this were but done they would dun me no more ; 
I told Philothea his struggles and doubts, 
And how he considered the ins and the outs 



82 A FABLE FOR CRITICS 

Of the visions he had, and the dreadful dyspepsy, 
How he went to the seer that lives at Po'keepsie, 
How the seer advised him to sleep on it first, 
And to read his big volume in case of the worst, 
And further advised he should pay him five dollars 
For writing J)ttttt, |)ttm, on his wristbands and collars ; 
Three years and ten days these dark words he had studied 
When the daughter was missed, and the aloe had budded ; 
I told how he watched it grow large and more large, 
And wondered how much for the show he should 

charge, — 
She had listend with utter indifference to this, till 
I told how it bloomed, and, discharging its pistil 
With an aim the Eumenides dictated, shot 
The botanical filicide dead on the spot ; 
It had blown, but he reaped not his horrible gains, 
For it blew with such force as to blow out his brains, 
And the crime was blown also, because on the wad, 
Which was paper, was writ ' Visitation of God,' 
As well as a thrilling account of the deed 
Which the coroner kindly allowed me to read. 

" Well, my friend took this story up just, to be sure, 
As one might a poor foundling that 's laid at one's door ; 
She combed it and washed it and clothed it and fed it, 
And as if 't were her own child most tenderly bred it, 



A FABLE FOR CRITICS 83 

Laid the scene (of the legend, I mean) far away a- 
-mong the green vales underneath Himalaya, 
And by artist-like touches, laid on here and there, 
Made the whole thing so touching, I frankly declare 
I have read it all thrice, and, perhaps I am weak, 
But I found every time there were tears on my cheek. 

" The pole, science tells us, the magnet controls, 
But she is a magnet to emigrant Poles, 
And folks with a mission that nobody knows, 
Throng thickly about her as bees round a rose ; 
She can fill up the carets in such, make their scope 
Converge to some focus of rational hope, 
And, with sympathies fresh as the morning, their 

gall 
Can transmute into honey, — but this is not all ; 
Not only for those she has solace, O say, 
Vice's desperate nursling adrift in Broadway, 
Who clingest, with all that is left of thee human, 
To the last slender spar from the wreck of the woman, 
Hast thou not found one shore where those tired droop- 
ing feet 
Could reach firm mother-earth, one full heart on whose 

beat 
The soothed head in silence reposing could hear 
The chimes of far childhood throb back on the ear ? 



84 A FABLE FOR CRITICS 

Ah, there 's many a beam from the fountain of day 
That, to reach us unclouded, must pass, on its way, 
Through the soul of a woman, and hers is wide ope 
To the influence of Heaven as the blue eyes of Hope ; 
Yes, a great heart is hers, one that dares to go in 
To the prison, the slave-hut, the alleys of sin, 
And to bring into each, or to find there, some line 
Of the never completely out-trampled divine ; 
If her heart at high floods swamps her brain now and 

then, 
'T is but richer for that when the tide ebbs agen, 
As, after old Nile has subsided, his plain 
Overflows with a second broad deluge of grain ; 
What a wealth would it bring to the narrow and sour 
Could they be as a Child but for one little hour ! 

" What ! Irving ? thrice welcome, warm heart and fine 

brain, 
You bring back the happiest 

spirit from Spain, 
And the gravest sweet humor, 

that ever were there 
Since Cervantes met death in his 
gentle despair ; 
Nay don't be embarrassed, nor look so beseeching, — 
I sha'n't run directly against my own preaching, 




A FABLE FOR CRITICS 85 

And having just laughed at their Raphaels and Dantes, 
Go to setting you up beside matchless Cervantes ; 
But allow me to speak what I honestly feel, — 
To a true poet-heart add the fun of Dick Steele, 
Throw in all of Addison, minus the chill, 
With the whole of that partnership's stock and good- 
will, 
Mix well, and while stirring, hum o'er, as a spell, 
The fine old English Gentleman, simmer it well, 
Sweeten just to your own private liking, then strain, 
That only the finest and clearest remain, 
Let it stand out of doors till a soul it receives 
From the warm lazy sun loitering down through green 

leaves, 
And you '11 find a choice nature, not wholly deserving 
A name either English or Yankee, — just Irving. 

"There goes, — but stet nominis icrnbra, 

— his name 
You '11 be glad enough, some day or 

other, to claim, 
And will all crowd about him and swear 

that you knew him 
If some English critic should chance to review him. 
The old porcos ante ?ie projiciatis 
Margaritas, for him you have verified gratis ; 




86 • A FABLE FOR CRITICS 

What matters his name ? Why, it may be Sylvester, 
Judd, Junior, or Junius, Ulysses, or Nestor, 
For aught /know or care ; 't is enough that I look 
On the author of ' Margaret,' the first Yankee book 
With the soul of Down East in 't, and things farther 

East, 
As far as the threshold of morning, at least, 
Where awaits the fair dawn of the simple and true, 
Of the day that comes slowly to make all things new. 
'T has a smack of pine woods, of bare field and bleak 

hill, 
Such as only the breed of the Mayflower could till ; 
The Puritan 's shown in it, tough to the core, 
Such as prayed, smiting Agag on red Marston Moor : 
With an unwilling humor, half choked by the drouth 
In brown hollows about the inhospitable mouth ; 
With a soul full of poetry, though it has qualms 
About finding a happiness out of the Psalms ; 
Full of tenderness, too, though it shrinks in the dark, 
Hamadryad-like, under the coarse, shaggy bark ; 
That sees visions, knows wrestlings of God with the 

Will, 
And has its own Sinais and thunderings still." 

Here, " Forgive me, Apollo," I cried, " while I pour 
My heart out to my birthplace : O loved more and more 



A FABLE FOR CRITICS 8? 

Dear Baystate, from whose rocky bosom thy sons 
Should suck milk, strong-will-giving, brave, such as runs 
In the veins of old Graylock — who is it that dares 
Call thee pedler, a soul wrapped in bank-books and 

shares ? 
It is false ! She 's a Poet ! I see, as I write, 
Along the far railroad the steam-snake glide white, 
The cataract-throb of her mill-hearts I hear, 
The swift strokes of trip-hammers weary my ear, 
Sledges ring upon anvils, through logs the saw screams, 
Blocks swing to their place, beetles drive home the 

beams : — 
It is songs such as these that she croons to the din 
Of her fast-flying shuttles, year out and year in, 
While from earth's farthest corner there comes not a 

breeze 
But wafts her the buzz of her gold-gleaning bees : 
What though those horn hands have as yet found small 

time 
For painting and sculpture and music and rhyme ? 
These will come in due order ; the need that pressed 

sorest 
Was to vanquish the seasons, the ocean, the forest, 
To bridle and harness the rivers, the steam, 
Making those whirl her mill - wheels, this tug in her 

team. 



88 A FABLE FOR CRITICS 

To vassalize old tyrant Winter, and make 

Him delve surlily for her on river and lake ; — 

When this New World was parted, she strove not to 

shirk 
Her lot in the heirdom, the tough, silent Work, 
The hero-share ever, from Herakles down 
To Odin, the Earth's iron sceptre and crown : 
Yes, thou dear, noble Mother ! if ever men's praise 
Could be claimed for creating heroical lays, 
Thou hast won it ; if ever the laurel divine 
Crowned the Maker and Builder, that glory is thine ! 
Thy songs are right epic, they tell how this rude 
Rock-rib of our earth here was tamed and subdued ; 
Thou hast written them plain on the face of the planet 
In brave, deathless letters of iron and granite ; 
Thou hast printed them deep for all time ; they are set 
From the same runic type-fount and alphabet 
With thy stout Berkshire hills and the arms of thy 

Bay,— 
They are staves from the burly old Mayflower lay. 
If the drones of the Old World, in querulous ease, 
Ask thy Art and thy Letters, point proudly to these, 
Or, if they deny these are Letters and Art, 
Toil on with the same old invincible heart ; 
Thou art rearing the pedestal broad-based and grand 
Whereon the fair shapes of the Artist shall stand, 



A FABLE FOR CRITICS 89 

And creating, through labors undaunted and long, 
The theme for all Sculpture and Painting and Song ! 

" But my good mother Baystate wants no praise of 

mine, 
She learned from her mother a precept divine 
About something that butters no parsnips, her forte 
In another direction lies, work is her sport 
(Though she '11 courtesy and set her cap straight, that 

she will, 
If you talk about Plymouth and red Bunker's Hill). 
Dear, notable goodwife ! by this time of night, 
Her hearth is swept neatly, her fire burning bright, 
And she sits in a chair (of home plan and make) rocking, 
Musing much, all the while, as she darns on a stocking, 
Whether turkeys will come pretty high next Thanksgiving, 
Whether flour '11 be so dear, for, as sure as she 's living, 
She will use rye-and-injun then, whether the pig 
By this time ain't got pretty tolerable big, 
And whether to sell it outright will be best, 
Or to smoke hams and shoulders and salt down the 

rest, — 
At this minute, she 'd swop all my verses, ah, cruel ! 
For the last patent stove that is saving of fuel ; 
So I '11 just let Apollo go on, for his phiz 
Shows I 've kept him awaiting too long as it is." 



90 A FABLE FOR CRITICS 

" If our friend, there, who seems a reporter, is done 
With his burst of emotion, why, /will go on," 
Said Apollo ; some smiled, and, indeed, I must own 
There was something, sarcastic, perhaps, in his tone ; — 

" There 's Holmes, who is matchless among you for 
wit ; 
A Leyden-jar always full-charged, from 

which flit 
The electrical tingles of hit after hit ; 
In long poems 't is painful sometimes, 

and invites 
A thought of the way the new Tele- 
graph writes, 
Which pricks down its little sharp sentences spitefully 
As if you got more than you 'd title to rightfully, 
And you find yourself hoping its wild father Lightning 
Would flame in for a second and give you a fright'- 

ning. 
He has perfect sway of what I call a sham metre, 
But many admire it, the English pentameter, 
And Campbell, I think, wrote most commonly worse, 
With less nerve, swing, and fire in the same kind of 

verse, 
Nor e'er achieved anght in 't so worthy of praise 
As the tribute of Holmes to the grand Marseillaise. 




A FABLE FOR CRITICS 



91 



You went crazy last year over Bulwer's New Timon ; — 
Why, if B., to the day of his dying, should rhyme 

on, 
Heaping verses on verses and tomes upon tomes, 
He could ne'er reach the best point and vigor of 

Holmes. 
His are just the fine hands, too, to weave you a lyric 
Full of fancy, fun, feeling, or spiced with satyric 
In a measure so kindly, you doubt if the toes 
That are trodden upon are your own or your foes'. 



" There is Lowell, who 's striving 




Parnassus to climb 
With a whole bale of isms tied to- 
gether with rhyme, 
He might get on alone, spite of bram- 
bles and boulders, 
But he can 't with that bundle he has 

on his shoulders, 
The top of the hill he will ne'er come nigh reaching 
Till he learns the distinction 'twixt singing and preach- 
ing; 
His lyre has some chords that would ring pretty well. 
But he 'd rather by half make a drum of the shell, 
And rattle away till he 's old as Methusalem, 
At the head of a march to the last new Jerusalem. . 



9 2 



A FABLE FOR CRITICS 



^^va, 




" There goes Halleck, whose Fanny 's a pseudo Don 
Juan, 
With the wickedness out that gave salt 

to the true one, 
He's a wit, though, I hear, of the very 

first order, 
And once made a pun on the words 

soft Recorder ; 
More than this, he 's a very great poet, 
I 'm told, 
And has had his works published in crimson and gold, 
With something they call ' Illustrations,' to wit, 
Like those with which Chapman obscured Holy Writ, 1 
W 7 hich are said to illustrate, because, as I view it, 
Like lucus a non, they precisely don't do it ; 
Let a man who can write what himself understands 
Keep clear, if he can, of designing men's hands, 
Who bury the sense, if there 's any worth having, 
And then very honestly call it engraving. 
But, to quit badinage, which there is n't much wit in, 
Halleck 's better, I doubt not, than all he has written ; 
In his verse a clear glimpse you will frequently find, 
If not of a great, of a fortunate mind, 
Which contrives to be true to its natural loves 
In a world of back-offices, ledgers, and stoves. 

1 (Cuts rightly called wooden, as all must admit.) 



A FABLE FOR CRITICS 93 

When his heart breaks away from the brokers and banks, 
And kneels in his own private shrine to give thanks, 
There 's a genial manliness in him that earns 
Our sincerest respect (read, for instance, his ' Burns '). 
And we can't but regret (seek excuse where we may) 
That so much of a man has been peddled away. 

" But what 's that ? a mass-meeting ? No, there come 
in lots, 
The American Bulwers, Disraelis, and Scotts, 
And in short the American everything-elses, 
Each charging the others with envies and jealousies ; — 
By the way, 't is a fact that displays what profusions 
Of all kinds of greatness bless free institutions, 
That while the Old World has produced barely eight 
Of such poets as all men agree to call great, 
And of other great characters hardly a score 
(One might safely say less than that rather than more), 
With you every year a whole crop is begotten, 
They 're as much of a staple as corn is, or cotton \ 
Why, there 's scarcely a huddle of log-huts and shanties 
That has not brought forth its own Miltons and Dantes ; 
I myself know ten Byrons, one Coleridge, three Shelleys, 
Two Raphaels, six Titians, (I think) one Apelles, 
Leonardos and Rubenses plenty as lichens, 
One (but that one is plenty) American Dickens, 



94 A FABLE FOR CRITICS 

A whole flock of Lambs, any number of Tennysons, — 

In short, if a man has the luck to have any sons, 

He may feel pretty certain that one out of twain 

Will be some very great person over again. 

There is one inconvenience in all this, which lies 

In the fact that by contrast we estimate size, 1 

And where there are none except Titans, great stature 

Is only the normal proceeding of nature. 

What puff the strained sails of your praise will you furl 

at, if 
The calmest degree that you know is superlative ? 
At Rome, all whom Charon took into his wherry must, 
As a matter of course, be well issimust and errimust, 
A Greek, too, could feel, while in that famous boat he 

tost, 
That his friends would take care he was to-rost and orrarost, 
And formerly we, as through graveyards we past, 
Thought the world went from bad to worst fearfully 

fast; 
Let us glance for a moment, 'tis well worth the pains, 
And note what an average graveyard contains ; 
There lie levellers levelled, duns done up themselves, 
There are booksellers finally laid on their shelves, 

1 That is in most cases we do, but not all, 

Past a doubt, there are men who are innately small, 
Such as Blank, who, without being 'minished a tittle, 
Might stand for a type of the Absolute Little. 



A FABLE FOR CRITICS 95 

Horizontally there lie upright politicians, 
Dose-a-dose with their patients sleep faultless physi- 
cians, 
There are slave-drivers quietly whipped underground, 
There bookbinders, done up in boards, are fast bound, 
There card-players wait till the last trump be played, 
There all the choice spirits get finally laid, 
There the babe that's unborn is supplied with a 

berth, 
There men without legs get their six feet of earth, 
There lawyers repose, each wrapped up in his case, 
There seekers of office are sure of a place, 
There defendant and plaintiff get equally cast, 
There shoemakers quietly stick to the last, 
There brokers at length become silent as stocks, 
There stage-drivers sleep without quitting their box, 
And so forth and so forth and so forth and so on, 
With this kind of stuff one might endlessly go on ; 
To come to the point, I may safely assert you 
Will find in each yard every cardinal virtue ; * 
Each has six truest patriots : four discoverers of ether, 
Who never had thought on 't nor mentioned it either ; 
Ten poets, the greatest who ever wrote rhyme : 
Two hundred and forty first men of their time : 

1 (And at this just conclusion will surely arrive, 
That the goodness of earth is more dead than alive.) 



g6 A FABLE FOR CRITICS 

One person whose portrait just gave the least hint 
Its original had a most horrible squint : 
One critic, most (what do they call it ?) reflective, 
Who never had used the phrase ob- or subjective . 
Forty fathers of Freedom, of whom twenty bred 
Their sons for the rice-swamps, at so much a head, 
And their daughters for — faugh ! thirty mothers of 

Gracchi : 
Non-resistants who gave many a spiritual black-eye : 
Eight true friends of their kind, one of whom was a 

jailer : 
Four captains almost as astounding as Taylor : 
Two dozen of Italy's exiles who shoot us his 
Kaisership daily, stern pen-and-ink Brutuses, 
Who, in Yankee back-parlors, with crucified smile, 1 
Mount serenely their country's funereal pile : 
Ninety-nine Irish heroes, ferocious rebellers 
'Gainst the Saxon in cis-marine garrets and cellars, 
Who shake their dread fists o'er the sea and all that, — 
As long as a copper drops into the hat : 
Nine hundred Teutonic republicans stark 
From Vaterland's battles just won — in the Park, 
Who the happy profession of martyrdom take 
Whenever it gives them a chance at a steak : 
Sixty-two second Washingtons : two or three Jacksons : 

1 Not forgetting their tea, and their toast, though, the while. 



A FABLE FOR CRITICS 97 

And so many everythings-else that it racks one's 

Poor memory too much to continue the list, 

Especially now they no longer exist ; — 

I would merely observe that you 've taken to giving 

The puffs that belong to the dead to the living, 

And that somehow your trump-of-contemporary-doom's 

tones 
Is tuned after old dedications and tombstones." 

Here the critic came in and a thistle presented * — 
From a frown to a smile the god's features relented, 
As he stared at his envoy, who, swelling with pride, 
To the god's asking look, nothing daunted, replied, — 
" You 're surprised, I suppose, I was absent so long, 
But your godship respecting the lilies was wrong ; 
I hunted the garden from one end to t' other, 
And got no reward but vexation and bother, 
Till, tossed out with weeds in a corner to wither, 
This one lily I found and made haste to bring hither." 

" Did he think I had given him a book to review ? 
I ought to have known what the fellow would do," 
Muttered Phoebus aside, " for a thistle will pass 
Beyond doubt for the queen of all flowers with an ass ; 

1 Turn back now to page — goodness only knows what, 
And take a fresh hold on the thread of my plot. 



98 A FABLE FOR CRITICS 

He has chosen in just the same way as he 'd choose 
His specimens out of the books he reviews ; 
And now, as this offers an excellent text, 
I '11 give 'em some brief hints on criticism next." 
So, musing a moment, he turned to the crowd, 
And, clearing his voice, spoke as follows aloud : — 

" My friends, in the happier days of the muse, 
We were luckily free from such things as reviews ; 
Then naught came between with its fog to make clearer 
The heart of the poet to that of his hearer ; 
Then the poet brought heaven to the people, and they 
Felt that they, too, were poets in hearing his lay ; 
Then the poet was prophet, the past in his soul 
Precreated the future, both parts of one whole ; 
Then for him there was nothing too great or too 

small, 
For one natural deity sanctified all ; 
Then the bard owned no clipper and meter of moods 
Save the spirit of silence that hovers and broods 
O'er the seas and the mountains, the rivers and woods ; 
He asked not earth's verdict, forgetting the clods, 
His soul soared and sang to an audience of gods ; 
S T was for them that he measured the thought and the 

line, 
And shaped for their vision the perfect design, 



A FABLE FOR CRITICS 99 

With as glorious a foresight, a balance as true, 
As swung out the worlds in the infinite blue ; 
Then a glory and greatness invested man's heart, 
The universal, which now stands estranged and apart, 
In the free individual moulded, was Art; 
Then the forms of the Artist seemed thrilled with desire 
For something as yet unattained, fuller, higher, 
As once with her lips, lifted hands, and eyes listening, 
And her whole upward soul in her countenance glisten- 
ing, 
Eurydice stood — like a beacon unfired, 
Which, once touched with flame, will leap heav'nward 

inspired — 
And waited with answering kindle to mark 
The first gleam of Orpheus that pained the red Dark. 
Then painting, song, sculpture did more than relieve 
The need that men feel to create and believe, 
And as, in all beauty, who listens with love 
Hears these words oft repeated — ' beyond and above/ 
So these seemed to be but the visible sign 
Of the grasp of the soul after things more divine ; 
They were ladders the Artist erected to climb 
O'er the narrow horizon of space and of time, 
And we see there the footsteps by which men had 

gained 
To the one rapturous glimpse of the never-attained, 



100 A FABLE FOR CRITICS 

As shepherds could erst sometimes trace in the sod 
The last spurning print of a sky-cleaving god 

" But now, on the poet's dis-privacied moods 
With do this and do that the pert critic intrudes ; 
While he thinks he 's been barely fulfilling his duty 
To interpret 'twixt men and their own sense of beauty, 
And has striven, while others sought honor or pelf, 
To make his kind happy as he was himself, 
He finds he 's been guilty of horrid offences 
In all kinds of moods, numbers, genders, and tenses ; 
He 's been ob- and j#£jective, what Kettle calls Pot, 
Precisely, at all events, what he ought not ; 
You have done this, says one judge ; done that, says 

another ; 
You should have done this, grumbles one ; that, says 

't other ; 
Never mind what he touches, one shrieks out Taboo / 
And while he is wondering what he shall do, 
Since each suggests opposite topics for song, 
They all shout together you're right ! and you 're wrong ! 

" Nature fits all her children with something to do, 
He who would write and can't write can surely review, 
Can set up a small booth as critic and sell us his 
Petty conceit and his pettier jealousies : 



A FABLE FOR CRITICS 101 

Thus a lawyer's apprentice, just out of his teens, 

Will do for the Jeffrey of six magazines ; 

Having read Johnson's lives of the poets half through, 

There 's nothing on earth he 's not competent to ; 

He reviews with as much nonchalance as he whistles, — 

He goes through a book and just picks out the thistles ; 

It matters not whether he blame or commend, 

If he 's bad as a foe, he 's far worse as a friend : 

Let an author but write what 's above his poor scope, 

He goes to work gravely and twists up a rope, 

And, inviting the world to see punishment done, 

Hangs himself up to bleach in the wind and the sun ; 

'T is delightful to see, when a man comes along 

Who has anything in him peculiar and strong, 

Every cockboat that swims clear its fierce (pop) gundeck 

at him, 
And make as he passes its ludicrous Peck at him " — 

Here Miranda came up and began, " As to that " — 
Apollo at once seized his gloves, cane, and hat, 
And seeing the place getting rapidly cleared, 
I too snatched my notes and forthwith disappeared. 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 



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